Sex, Blood and Rock 'n' Roll
by cowgirlfromhell
Summary: Dean spends a little time with a vampire. Will he accept what she has to offer? And has someone from her past come through the gates of hell to find them?
1. Chapter 1

Sex, Blood and Rock 'n' Roll

Dean Winchester was at an even dozen. His gloves, slick with blood and other visceral fluids, dripped as he wiped sweat from his brow on the only spot on his shirt not similarly smeared with gore. He grabbed another stake from his bag, the last one now protruding from the chest of a biker straight out of From Dusk 'Til Dawn. An ear splitting scream came from the far end of the old barn and he smiled in satisfaction. Sam Winchester had uncovered another vampire and dispatched it to hell. "How many's that for you, Sammy?" he called out as he made his way back to his brother searching for more tell tale signs among the bales of hay and old farm equipment as he went.

"Too many," Sam replied. The younger Winchester was bent over, hands grasping a stall wall, puking up his breakfast and his lunch both, "Way too many."

Dean walked up and smiled at his brother's obvious discomfort and slapped him on the back. "One more for me and it's a Dracula's dozen."

"Yeah, great man." Sam tried to feign enthusiasm but couldn't bring it up. What he did bring up was more vomit.

"Oh, man," Dean laughed, quickly backing away, "You'll get used to it."

Sam hoped with all his heart that he never would. He loved his brother more than anything in the world and, despite Ruby's urging, he never wanted to be so much like Dean that taking a human life, no mater how mutated and twisted it had become, was just another day at the office. As it was he'd killed half a dozen teenagers and young adults in just under two hours. Granted at sunset they would have gutted him and bled him out as soon as looked at him but they were once sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. But now they were just dead.

"You want to help Bobby with the out buildings? Take a breather?" Dean asked.

"No, I'm all right. Just something I ate, I guess."

"Dude, you are really green around the gills," Dean teased looking at Sam's pained expression, "How 'bout you take the hayloft and I'll catch the basement or whatever you call that Hell Mouth down there. Not even a wet werewolf smell that bad."

Sam smiled his gratitude and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. There was no way that he could have ever done the basement knowing that manure and animal carcasses were routinely shoveled through the large square hole in the main floor to decompose below. He would take his queasy stomach and his chances in the hayloft above and started up the ramp while Dean descended into the barn's bowels down a ladder nailed to the wall.

The sub level of the barn was about half the size of the upper floor and opened out into a pasture. It was damp and teaming with rodents and probably a million airborne diseases and Dean stepped gingerly toward the center and quickly came upon a rotting corpse. As his eyes grew accustomed to the meager light he spotted a second.

The dump hole was directly above the bodies that had been unceremoniously thrown out like so much trash, if people were in the habit of throwing their offal down in the basement of their homes. The stench was overpowering and he pulled a small plastic container of Vicks out of his pocket. Rubbing a dollop under each nostril he remembered the perpetual cold he thought his father always had until he discovered the real reason behind all the small blue containers that were always kicking around when he and Sam were growing up.

"Man, you do not shit where you eat," he muttered to himself and used the steel toe of his boot to kick aside more moldered hay revealing the very fresh corps of a young woman. He stepped back and heard the unmistakable crunch of bone.

Skin crawling, his heart rate kicked up another notch as he toed away more of the hay. A fourth body, this one older than the previous ones, dried and blackened, was also loosely buried under the straw and half sunk in the muck. How many more humans had been tossed through the opening in the floor and into the lye pit below like the carcasses of dead farm animals?

Maybe they were, in fact, "cows" captured and penned up and "milked" for blood, food for the monsters that inhabited this particular nest. It was a concept that, at the least, made him sick to his stomach and, at most, made him mad as hell.

A shower of hay fell from above and Dean looked up and saw Sam's face come into view at least two stories above him. "Anything?" he shouted up to him and Sam grimaced.

The sun was beginning to set and he didn't know if they'd found all of them yet and he feared Dean's shouts might 'wake the dead' as it were. "There's something up here covered up by a tarp," he replied in a loud stage whisper.

Bag over his shoulder, Dean headed toward a ladder and made his way quickly up the two flights to the hayloft. He walked quickly over to where Sam stood, his brother clutching a sharpened stake tightly in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Sam nodded toward the stiff tarp hidden between bales of hay, a tarp that obviously hid something. Neither had a clue as to what it might be but Dean was taking no chances.

In one hand, the elder Winchester held a stake at the ready to incapacitate whatever was under the tarp and, in the other, he held a sickle to finish the job if it was indeed another vampire. He took a deep breath and slowly pulled the odd square of oiled olive drab cloth back revealing a small figure, its head fully encased in a metal helmet adorned with a grotesque mask.

"Another vampire?" Sam wondered aloud taking in the sophisticated cruelty of the headgear's design.

"Nah, just a little girl," Dean guessed looking at the delicate bones of the arms shackled to a beam above and from the long, matted, red-gold hair that snaked out from beneath the headpiece.

Sam noted that the mask, fastened to the globe-like headpiece, was a replica of some sort of stylized bird and that the headpiece itself was unmarked except for two small holes through which to breathe. The whole contraption looked heavy enough to snap the girl's slender neck.

In the flashlight's beam Dean could see the bruised and blood-caked puncture wounds that covered almost every inch of the up-stretched arms where the vampires had fed and he wondered why they had even bothered. How much blood could they have gotten from someone so small he thought as he pulled the tarp the rest of the way off.

The girl was completely naked and Dean could see that she was not a child at all but still couldn't have been more than a teenager at most. He noted the same bloodied bite marks all along her rail thin legs and emaciated torso and her breasts were riddled with puncture wounds as if she had suckled a demonic infant.

Sam hunkered down in front of her and put his fingers to her neck. Her skin was so cold to the touch as he felt for a pulse that he thought she was dead until a weak moan came from behind the mask. "She's alive but barely," he said softly and gently pushed the encased head forward to study the locking mechanism that held the medieval contraption together and in place.

The lock was based on an ancient oriental puzzle that Sam had seen in his father's journal and. shifting a few metal pieces barely visible to the eye, the mask separated into three pieces which he gingerly removed to reveal a delicate heart-shaped face, frightened gray eyes and a mouth bruised and covered with blood. Sam noticed traces of blood on the solid metal ball that protruded inwardly from the helmet serving as a gag as well as blood on the spikes on either side where they had more than likely punctured her eardrums.

Sam stood up and stepped back to give Dean room to work on removing the shackles that held the girl's hands fast above her head. He grabbed Dean's arm and asked, "Do you think she's turned?"

The girl's eyes grew even more frightened, if possible, either from Sam's question or from Dean's close proximity. "Nah, she could've broken the chains easily enough," Dean told him and moved even closer to the girl. She shrank further back to the wall and he tried to sooth her, "It's okay, they're all dead. We're here to help you."

Sam hoped to hell they had cleared the entire nest but if they overlooked any they needed to get a move on. Daylight was quickly burning.

Dean picked the locks in mere seconds and the shackles came loose and slid off of the beam dropping neatly into his hands. He stood and tossed them off to the side next to the now discarded mask and helmet.

The girl sighed and Sam could see relief in her eyes as squatted to help her up. She smiled weakly and stretched out her cramped arms. She then stretched out a leg and kicked him hard in the side of the head with her bare foot. The force of the blow slammed him into the hayloft wall and, if darkness hadn't engulfed him, Sam would have warned his brother. He would have told Dean that the girl's k-nines had distended grotesquely and that her gray eyes had turned to quicksilver and that, chains notwithstanding, she had in fact turned.

But Dean already knew, knew it the moment she rose up with incredible speed and grabbed him with tremendous strength and pressed her sweet bow of a mouth against his neck. She sank her teeth painfully into his jugular vein and began to drink thirstily. Dean wanted to push her away but he couldn't move a muscle. It was as if she was some kind of insect and her bite had paralyzed him and, as her strength grew, he became weaker and weaker.

Dean's heart beat slower and slower as his life's blood drained to what he knew must be a dangerously low level. Black dots swam before his eyes and he knew death was eminent but the vampire suddenly let go of him and he crumpled to lie at her feet.

The girl slumped back against the barn wall, eyes closed, panting noisily, his blood dripping lazily down her chin and as the minutes ticked by the wounds on her body began to heal leaving her skin glistening like polished white marble. Her sunken cheeks grew plump and pink and her red-gold hair began to sparkle, the long spiral curls growing thick and luxurious once again and, as he watched the transformation, Dean longed to kiss her sensuous rosebud mouth despite her lips being drenched in his own blood.

As if she knew he'd been thinking lascivious thoughts the vampire opened her eyes and looked down at him, a half smile on her face. She Then, as if lifted by preternatural strings, she rose up and in a graceful fluid motion floated to where Sam lay in a crumpled heap in the course hay.

Her long hair caressed him as she hovered over him like a malevolent angel and just listened to his deep steady breathing and to his heart beating soundly, pumping his blood throughout his body.

"No!" Dean tried to shout but his voice came out as only a panicked whisper.

The vampire heard him and assured that the taller of the two men was only unconscious glided silently back to Dean.

"Finish me but please don't hurt my brother," he begged her and his heart turned in his chest when she smiled showing him her fangs.

"I have no intention of hurting Sammy or "finishing you", Dean Winchester," she explained settling into a cross-legged position beside him, "I'm just beginning."

_"Oh, crap,"_ he thought and his mind's eye conjured up a picture of her slicing open a vein and them becoming 'blood brothers'.

"Business first," she told him and asked, "There are three of you. Where is the other?"

She spoke English but it was stilted and strangely flat and with an accent he couldn't begin to place. It sounded like she might have been from Europe or a lot further south, Hell maybe, and she was asking a question he didn't want to answer.

Dean closed his eyes and tried to think of anything but Bobby Singer but his thoughts went directly to where they had left him searching the many out buildings on the Mayfield farm. He opened his eyes again and knew she'd seen just what he'd pictured but she evidently didn't feel threatened by the older, more experienced hunter because she continued to sit and calmly watch him.

"You killed the fledglings?" Through his mind's eye she saw him and his brother methodically search out and destroy the vampires that had held her captive and, although she felt no remorse that this particular group had been decimated, she did want to know why killing vampires was so important to them.

Weak as a kitten Dean lifted himself up and resting on his elbows answered her. "Damn straight, sweetheart. I would have taken your head in a New York minute, too, if I'd have known they'd turned you," he said with false bravado.

"Turned me?" she asked with a quizzical frown.

"You know, mix vampire blood with human."

"You watch too much television. The change would only be temporary," she told him contemptuously and wondered when humans would stop killing innocents?

Dean looked stunned for a moment at her revelation and then forged on pragmatically. He couldn't afford to cry over spilled blood but asked her anyway, "You mean I didn't have to kill the hot blonde chick."

The vampire saw the blade slice through Lucy's neck. She saw the woman's head spin and fall to the floor; saw the blood spurting furiously at the very same moment Dean replayed the disturbing events in his mind. "A waste of life...a waste of life's blood," she said in a harsh angry whisper.

"It's always all about the blood, isn't it?" he laughed contemptuously, "Thanks to your kind I can barely look a rare steak in the eye anymore."

"Gordon Walker...," she said and her hand went to her throat and her eyes to Sam's prone body, "wasn't my kind." She was tuned into Dean TV and watched the past few months play back in living color in his mind.

For the life of him he couldn't stop it. The more he tried to dis-remember the more he could see his brother Sam's face as he pulled the razor wire tighter and tighter all the while Gordon Walker's head became looser and looser. "Couldn't be avoided," he said simply and lay back onto the hay, his energy now spent. "Old Gordo's change may have only been temporary but the dude's stark raving insanity was permanent."

Looking up at her again and into her eyes Dean got the feeling that this particular vampire might not be a trainee after all and he changed the subject to try and clear his mind of all of the rest of the vampires they'd dispatched along the roads they'd traveled. "What's your name anyway?" he asked but didn't wait for an answer, "Never mind. I'll call you Abby. You know... short for abomination. So tell me Abs, are you gonna turn me or let me go on about my business?"

She tilted her head and looked at him, a smile quirking her full red lips. She enjoyed this mortal's thoughts even though most of them were dark and pain filled. She also liked the fact that he was a consummate smart ass and told him, "Since your business is staking and decapitating "my kind" I don't think I'll be turning you loose any time soon. Besides, I'd like to know you better."

"Ah, the curse of the Winchester charm...well, maybe just the Dean Winchester charm," he said rolling his eyes "So you want to get to know me, huh?" She nodded and smiled, the fading light reflecting off of her teeth, and he began to babble in hopes of keeping her mind on him and off of Sam until Bobby could get to them. "Well, I'm just shy of thirty and an Aquarius. I like taking long walks down haunted hallways, killing Wendigos by moonlight and I want world peace. What else do you want to know?"

The vampire felt his fear and laughed softly to try and put him at ease. She truly meant him no harm. A solitary creature by nature, she never gathered in clans or "nests" as he had called them but through the blood she was now connected to this mortal and she wanted to keep him, if only for a little while. She was simply lonely and asked, "Why do you hunt us?"

Dean sighed wearily. He didn't want to answer any more of her questions; he just wanted to sleep. He did managed to muster up enough strength to reply testily, "You're blood sucking, murdering monsters that have no place here on earth, that's why."

"Don't hold back," she quipped stretching her arms above her head and added, "So, judging by your answer you, in effect, know nothing about vampires."

"What's to know? You kill humans, I kill you," he told her, "And what could you possibly tell me that would change my mind? Look at you. Those sons of bitches fed off of you. You're just one big, happy, friggin' family."

"These are deviants, mindless creatures carelessly created," she said with a sweep of her arm, "Do you want to know about true vampires, about me?"

Rolling his eyes Dean snorted contemptuously, his lip curling. "I already know all I need to know about you, Abby. You're one of them," he told her, "and a natural red head."

Abby looked down at her nakedness and, totally unaffected by it, laughed. She'd always thought the human body a work of art and was pleased that the pendulum had evidently swung away from puritanical views of life and love yet again. She also liked to shop, most especially for haute couture. "Just like hunters we're not all the same. Your brother is...discriminating," she reminded him.

"To a fault and it might get him killed one of these days. For him there are degrees of evil. For me its evil is as evil does."

"I know of your life long hatred of evil and your hunting of it but it may not be prudent to lump all vampires together."

"Oh, I've met bleeding heart vampires before, no pun intended. Vampires trying for redemption but there aren't enough of 'em out there drinking cow's blood for me to worry about."

"And you don't think these vampires are worth saving? We have gifts to offer. Healing, vast stores of knowledge and..."

"Death!" Dean snapped, his fuse growing shorter by the minute, "Like the Marines say "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out."

The thought of God had always intrigued her and she asked him, a mischievous grin on her face, "Do you think we'll see God some day? Me with my preternatural thirst and you with your deal?"

Amazed that he could mouth off to a vampire and not get bitch slapped and stunned that she knew about it, it was his turn to ask a rhetorical question. "You know about my deal?"

"I've drunk from you, Dean. I know your life's history, everything you've ever done and everything you've ever seen. I feel what you feel, love who you love, hate who you hate."

"Then you must not be feelin' the love from me right about now," he said and closed his eyes. Being a human Slurpee took a toll on a man.

The girl sat silently for a few moments and studied his placid features and marveled at his emotional detachment. For all he knew these could be his last moments on earth but he had no fear for himself. Except for a brief but intense jolt when his mind had turned to thoughts of Hell, a feeling immediately brought under control and quickly dampened, his only concern was for his brother.

His was a disciplined mind but the place he stored his memories leaked like a sieve and as his blood flowed through her veins the connection grew stronger and churned up emotions she'd thought long since dead. She knew Dean held tightly to vague memories of a mother and of a father's love so strong that it transcended even death and blood tinged tears began to trickled down her cheek. It was a love she had felt only once before in her long, long life and it had cost her dearly and she wanted to tell Dean that the cost of such a love was so very high but she feared he already knew. She could feel his strength ebbing even more and asked, "Do you want to know about vampires...about me?"

Dean sniggered, threw a dead weight arm across his eyes and, not thinking, told her. "Sure, why not? I'm sure there's a whole lot I can learn from a baby vamp like you."

With preternatural speed the girl grabbed his arm and pulled him up into a sitting position, his head flopping back on weakened muscles. She grabbed his face and squeezed his cheeks painfully forcing his mouth open.

With his remaining strength Dean tried to pry her fingers loose but the more he pulled the harder she dug in until he thought she would break his jaw. As her face drew closer he saw the blood tears and smelled the coppery scent of his own blood on her breath and, just before she pressed her lips to his, he thought, _"They breathe...and they puke!"_ his mind screamed as blood flooded his mouth.


	2. Chapter 2

Dean's stomach heaved mightily and threatened to expel the blood she had force-fed him but after a few minutes it quieted and a feeling of well-being crept over him as his regurgitated blood flowed back into his weakened body renewing his strength and energy. He sat up, brushed the straw from his hair and looked around for the vampire. He found her standing over him. She offered him her hand and when he touched her Dean realized that his teenage Elvira was very, very old, not just in decades but in centuries.

Her memories flooded his mind and almost knocked him back down again. Ancient places and people swirled in his mind's eye, the beauty and the enormity of it all causing his head to spin. As he fought to keep his balance the memories were suddenly replaced by a lone figure, a handsome man with coal black hair hanging past his broad shoulders and with eyes that burned intensely...like quicksilver.

The girl forced the memory from her mind and from his but it left behind raw, emotional pain so intense, even after so many years, that she saw Dean falter and fearing for the hunter's sanity she slammed the mental door into his mind so hard that his teeth snapped together.

Dean staggered away from her and shook his head, scrubbing his hands across his face. "What the hell was all that all about?"

She felt it best to just remain silent and to just let the blood take him...and take him it did.

The first change Dean noticed was that he could see in the dark. He could not only see in the dark but he could almost see things on a molecular level. As he looked around he could see the scurrying rats that abounded in the myriad of nooks and crannies that ran the length and breadth of the barn. He could not only see the vermin that dwelt there but he could practically see the greasy hair on their bodies growing. "Oh, man," he whispered and looked this way and that, trying to take in every square inch of the hayloft.

The vampire watched his reaction to his transformation and, instead of being appalled as she thought he might be, Dean Winchester seemed to actually enjoy his heightened ocular sensory perception. His only complaint? No x-ray vision she heard him silently bitch and laughed.

He looked at her sheepishly and asked, "That thing about Victoria's Secret?" She nodded and he stood staring intently at her, his face contorting every few seconds. He finally sighed and his features relaxed. "Okay, you can read my mind but why can't I read yours?"

"I was wondering what was paining you so. It takes discipline and many, many years."

Dean looked disappointed momentarily then returned to studying his surroundings.

"You would use such a gift to win bets in bars?" she then asked him.

"Goddamn it, Abby," he snapped and turned to look at her angrily.

She dipped her head regally acknowledging his boundaries. If she could help it, she would not consciously trespass again and she stepped back into the shadows and the blood took him again.

In addition to his enhanced vision, Dean noticed that he could smell...everything. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, inhaling the dry musty smell of the hay, the coppery smell of blood, the noxiously sweet smell of rotting flesh and the pungent stench of pure evil that permeated the barn. He sniffed again and recognized the scent of his brother even though he was across the hayloft.

Amazed at his new found olfactory prowess he inhaled again and smelled the familiar odors he complained about when he and Sam went too long without a shower or a stop at a Laundromat but the closer he got to his brother the more he noticed three particular odors. The essence of what he and his brother sacrificed every day of their lives...blood, sweat and tears. Oh yeah, and beer.

He smelled the cheap kind of light beer Sam liked and the more full-bodied lager he favored mixed with pheromones so powerful that he suddenly realized Abby was standing right behind him. He spun around and her scent, now altered as his blood flowed through her veins and permeated every cell of her body, wafted around them and he, in effect, could smell himself. Dean smiled with satisfaction as he now smelled beer and lust, the staples of his life.

As he continued on with his new found self-awareness Dean suddenly found that he had an overwhelming urge for a nice cold one and to bang Abby on the spot. He thought better of it because sex with a vampire gorged on your own blood would be kind of incestuous and pretty disgusting and he'd get a beer as soon as he sliced and diced Abby.

Yeah, a beer and a cheeseburger...or three or four cheeseburgers...dripping with ketchup, he thought as a hunger, stronger than any bong-induced case of the munchies he could have ever imagined, suddenly overcame him and saliva literally dripped from his mouth. Looking over at his brother, Dean noticing the still oozing wound where Sam's head had connected with the stall and was drawn to the crimson gash. He tried to kneel down next to his prone form, the smell of Sammy's blood a veritable siren's song, but Abby placed a hand forcefully on his arm and yanked him back up.

"You would never forgive yourself and..." she opened her mouth and tapped a fingernail against one of her elongated k-nines.

Dean ran his tongue over his teeth and found that they were dull and blunted; the same teeth he'd had since loosing all his baby teeth. By the time he was six, Dean was fully versed on the evils that hid in closets and under beds and he'd flushed each and every one of his lost teeth down the toilet as soon as they fell out to avoid a visit from the tooth fairy. He looked at her and fear and confusion quickly replaced the blood lust that had shown in his eyes just moments before.

"You haven't asked me...yet," she told him answering his unspoken question.

Dean's hearing was just as acute as his other senses but he couldn't hear her thoughts. He could however hear the rustling of something much larger than barn rats or cats and he turned just in time to see another vampire rise up out of the straw and hiss like a scalded cat. But before he could open his mouth to call out, Abby, without even a sideways glance, lifted a hand and the creature erupted into flames and, screaming, fell back down into the straw setting it ablaze.

Abby then told him, "There are more starting to stir so you'd better call your Bobby Singer if you don't want your brother to burn with them."

"I can..."

"Call your friend and follow me! I told you there are more," she said adding a tiny mental 'push' toward him.

Dean flipped open his phone and pressed Bobby's number while Abby picked Sam up effortlessly and headed toward the large sliding barn doors.

"Dean, what's going on? You find the sonsabitches?" Bobby wanted to know.

There was a strange echo through the phone and Dean realized he was hearing Bobby, not through the phone but first hand even though he was a quarter mile down the road at one of the holding pens. "Bobby, Sammy's out cold and this tinderbox is starting to go up. You gotta get him out," Dean said calmly following closely behind the vampire, his eyes searching the darkness for more of the nest.

"What about you? Where are you?" Bobby lowered his phone and looked toward the barn and spotted the orange glow of the fire in the hayloft. Crap! Fire was the most efficient way to rid the world of vampires but many times things got out of hand, just as they looked to be tonight, and Bobby sprinted back to his car.

Abby deposited Sam none to gently by the door then turned toward Dean and raised both arms. Instinctively he ducked but she wasn't after him. Two screeching vampires swooped down from the rafters and exploded into fireballs and slammed into the barn walls on either side of them.

Dean moved closer to Abby and she suddenly collapsed without warning. He scooped her up into his arms and, seeing that Sam was relatively safe just inside the barn door and finally coming around, ran out of the conflagration just as Bobby was coming up the drive. His car skidded to a halt and he jumped out sprinting toward the barn as Dean came barreling past him, a naked girl in his arms, presumably headed for the Impala.

"He's right by the door, Bobby," Dean shouted back to him as they passed in the night.

Son of a bitch Bobby thought shaking his head as he headed into the barn. Leave it to Dean to find a live girl in the barn and a naked one to boot. He looked around and caught a glimpse of Sam's shirt as the young hunter tried to head back into the dense, gray smoke. "Sam!" Bobby screamed, "Dean's Okay! They're already outside!"

A minute later Sam came bolting back out of the smoke with the metal headgear and chains clutched to his chest. He grabbed Bobby's jacket sleeve as he went by and the two of them stumbled out the door and didn't stop until the stood next to the Chevelle. Sam looked around for the Impala but it was nowhere in sight. He dropped the hardware onto the ground and started to cough up a lung.

"That was a damn fool thing to do, Sammy," Bobby chastised the younger Winchester glancing at the objects he had dropped on the ground. Sam continued to cough uncontrollably and Bobby squatted to study the medieval torture device. He'd seen one like it before but there'd been a severed head in it and one less vampire in the world. "Tell me you beheaded whatever was in this before you took it off," Bobby said looking up at Sam.

"I don't know. There was a girl. She kicked me in the head..." Sam started not really knowing what had happened after his kick to the head, "That thing was on her head."

"Was she a redhead?" Bobby demanded and when Sam nodded he knew the naked woman Dean had carried out of the blazing conflagration was a vampire.

Sam was confused. She could have carried Dean out of the barn with one hand if she was a vampire so why was he carrying her? More importantly, why hadn't his brother killed her? Sam didn't understand but he nodded, "Yeah, they had her chained to the wall and were feeding on her."

Bobby wiped away some of the black tarnish on the chains and then held up the headpiece to get a better look at the grotesque mask. It was quite different from the one he had seen and looked like it had may have come from the Middle or Far East. "Well, when you boys screw up, you really screw up. These things are solid silver, one of the only things that render a vampire harmless and you took it off of her."

"How were we supposed to know?" Sam asked plaintively.

"I'm surprised at your brother. What happened to shot first, ask questions later?"

After a short silence punctuated by more coughing, Sam asked, "I get the chains but why the mask and the helmet?" Sam reached down to pick up the chains and tossed them into the back seat of Bobby's car.

"The headpiece makes the wearer deaf, dumb and blind. If a vampire can't look you in the eye or whisper sweet nothings into your ear, it can't force you to let it go or make you to do something far worse. And if it can't hear, it never knows when the death blow's coming," Bobby told him and tossed the mask in with the chains, "

"So was she part of this nest?"

"Probably not," Bobby shouted and headed toward the driver's door as the roof of the barn gave way and fell inward.

As they backed down the driveway and drove away from the fire he told Sam, "I've heard of it before, vampires capturing one of their own to feed from it. It's usually an old one directly descended from an ancient line and incredibly strong so they can assimilate the power. The old ones are few and far between and the most dangerous."

"And she's got Dean," Sam sighed and rested his aching head against the seat back.

"Let's go see if we can find 'em. It ain't gonna be easy and you keep that silver rig close by. We'll need it to either save Dean," Bobby said and turned away from the younger Winchester to watch the road ahead of them, "or to kill him."


	3. Chapter 3

"I will never, never, ever let you drive my car again!"

Abby, swimming in a pair of Sam's jeans and one of Dean's torn and pitted t-shirts, sat in the Impala her hands caressing the steering wheel. She was breathing heavily, a huge smile was plastered on her face as AC/DC's Back in Black blared from the cassette deck and drowned out Dean's bitching and the throaty sound of the engine.

"You can't treat a classic car like this with such...such disrespect!" he shouted leaning over to switch off the ignition.

"Nonsense," she replied, "This car was made to run and to run hard."

"Yeah but you have to drive her with at least a little finesse," he countered.

"Finesse my rear end. Pedal to the metal as I see it," she retorted opening the car door.

"If you hadn't pulled that damsel in distress stunt in the barn you never would have gotten to the driver's door first."

"I did agree to put on drawers before I sat, didn't I?"

"Still, she's my car and..."

"And you are such a little old lady."

"I'll show you little old lady," Dean muttered as he stepped out of the car and looked up at the grand old Victorian home bathed in harsh security lights. It was the vampire's lair. Nice digs he thought and followed her up the stone steps where he waited patiently as she punched in a never-ending security code.

Stepping inside she turned and welcomed him to one of her many homes and, never hesitating, Dean stepped over the threshold. Abby led him to one of the two parlors off to either side of the foyer, a room decorated true to the period and chock full of antiques and memorabilia chronicling an unusual, to say the least, life.

Dean's eyes took in everything including the veritable art gallery before him. Dozens of framed oils and watercolors of all shapes and sizes hung on the walls above the wainscoting and after a quick perusal Dean noticed a similarity in all the subject matter. It was Abby herself and he thought she had certainly become full of herself over the years.

"Most were gifts from the artists themselves," she told him as she reset the security codes, "The others I purchased over the years as they became available and, no, not for vanity's sake but for self preservation. Many were accused of witchcraft for far less than never growing old."

"Why didn't you just burn 'em?"

"Because if you look closely you'll see that none of them were painted by hacks."

Dean knew that Sam would have recognized the styles of the artists right off the bat but even after seeing the signatures he still didn't know a Degas from a Renoir, although he did like the Goya of Abby as a witch eating French soldiers on a battlefield. "I never liked French food," he told her amazed at both the dark beauty and the depravity of the painting, "Too fussy."

She said nothing, just opened her mind to him and Dean Winchester was suddenly blind. He couldn't see anything. He could only hear the crazed screams of man and beast and the thunder of canon fire. The smell of gunpowder choked him as did the blood that ran freely down his throat. He tried to call out but no sounds would come and he reached up to his face and felt only crushed flesh and bone where the cannonball had torn through his jaw.

Blind but still able to hear; a woman's voice soothed him in perfect French. He felt her lips dance along his throat as she called him by name and promised to tell his wife and children that he died bravely and that he loved them up to the moment of his death and, if he could have spoken, Dean would have thanked her profusely for such kindness in a world gone mad with hunger, disease and war...if he spoke French.

Slowly the painting came back into focus and he knew a little bit more about a dying French soldiers and about Abby.

"Collectively, I've literally spent years on battlefields," she told him, "From the Crusades to Iraq, helping the mortally wounded slip their earthly bonds."

In her own way Anna had nobly served a purpose in the aftermath of war but why hadn't she done more, been more proactive? Dean moved on to a wall of photographs and asked, "Why don't you just go after the instigators, the Napoleons, the Hitlers..."

"The Darth Cheneys of the world?" she replied, "I am a vampire and inherently evil and a demon will do what a demon will. Then there's this little thing about always being hunted."

Dean perused the photographs on the wall starting with the tintypes and daguerreotypes where everyone in them looked as if they had been forced to eat three week old maggot infested meat.

"In those days it was thought to not smile was to show one's true self," she explained.

"Yeah...if one had gas."

She laughed and touched the gilt frame on one photo she was especially fond of. "He was dead the year after this was taken."

Dean looked at the daguerreotype and there she stood, dresses in a hoop skirt, her hand resting possessively on Edgar Allan Poe's shoulder. Written in his spidery hand at the bottom of the image were two names, Edgar and Annabel. He looked at her again, this time truly amazed, and recited from memory, "It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea."

She smiled please that he would remember and said, "So you didn't spend all your time at school trying to look up the girl's dresses."

"I was especially interested in Poe's work, not so much for the literary value but more as reference material."

"You've led such a strange life."

"You'd be the one to know," he said absently lifting the cover of a large photo album lying on a library table, "Son of a bitch." Abby was evidently a fan of classic rock bands and she had apparently rocked them all from Aerosmith, Anthrax and AC/DC to Zepplin, Zappa and ZZ Top, not to mention many of the newer bands.

Abby the vampire, the ultimate groupie as Dean now thought of her, watched him as he turned the pages and studied the grainy old black and white photographs intently. He smiled when he came across one of her on stage and perched on a young James Hetfield's shoulders.

"It doesn't have to be all blood and guts, Dean," she told him hopefully.

Closing the book he said, "You don't keep a very low profile."

"There's no need, really. How many times has someone come up to you and said that you look exactly like someone they know? If I need to I just pass myself off as a daughter or grand daughter or some distant relative."

"And no one suspects you're a vampire?"

"No one believes in us, not even after all the books. You didn't even think we were real."

"I read the reviews, 'The ravings of a drunken Irishman'."

"I can assure you he was quite sober."

"You knew Bram Stoker?" Abby just smiled and followed him as he continued to walk around the room. "Did he get it right?"

"Parts."

"Reflections in mirrors?"

She pointed to the wall behind him and he turned. "Don't we make a handsome couple?" she asked coming to stand beside him. She stood at least a foot shorter than him and probably weighed all of a hundred pounds soaking wet but he had to admit that they did look the part until he saw how much younger than him she was.

"Yeah, if I was into robbing cradles," he told her.

"I buried two infants," she told him and he expelled a huff of air as her still raw pain hit him like a punch in the gut.

"I'm sorry," they said in unison, he for touching on a sore subject and her for unintentionally inflicting pain.

"Crosses?" he asked moving away from the subject and from her before he did something mushy like hug her.

"Only ones made of silver; makes us weak."

"The chains in the barn?"

"Solid silver, the mask as well."

"That was one weird-ass S and M device."

"When it's on, a vampire can neither see, speak nor hear. It leaves us unable to compel and totally vulnerable."

"Solid silver? That stuff must be worth a fortune."

"Melted down, a few thousand dollars, as an artifact many thousands more. But to a hunter or another vampire, it can be priceless. It can also be very costly if used carelessly, something you'd best worn your brother of."

"I'll let him know." Dean suspected that Sam probably had the gear with him as they spoke, adding it to their already impressive arsenal. He, on the other hand, would be more apt to melt it down for bullets its intrinsic value as an artifact never coming into play. "So who got it right?"

"The closest was Anne Rice. A lovely woman but troubled, trying to balance religion and reality."

"I'm guessing our reality. Kinda twisted to say the least."

"She knows and revealed a great many things in her books," Abby said, her voice growing seductive.

"Like what?" he asked and stopped in front of a locked and hermetically sealed book case. Inside the case were ancient books and other paper relics. Dean noticed some of the titles on the spines. The Occult by Richard Boulton, The Black Pullet Grimoire among others and a seven volume set entitled The Necronomicon. He didn't know the true worth of the books only that Bela would sell her first born, if she hadn't already, to get her hands on them. "Bela would love this place."

"You just send her my way. I'll make her a deal she can't refuse."

"I bet you would," he smiled and thought a vampire could come in handy, "So what does Anne Rice know that we don't?"

"How to make a vampire, for one. If you remember her characters bled their victims to the point of death then offered or forced vampire blood in exchange."

A worried look crossed his face and Dean Winchester took a step away from her...as if it would do him any good. What would do him well was the promise she had made eons ago and to which she had held true. "And as I told you, I would never "turn you" unless you ask." She used her fingers to indicate quotations around his phrase.

"What does "your kind" call it then?" He hated air quotes and imitated her gesture.

"For some it's a gift, for others it's a curse." As soon as the words left her mouth the black haired man was again in Dean's head and a rage, powerful and uncontrolled, filled him and threatened to drown him until she closed her eyes and turned her thoughts in another direction. His breathing slowed to a manageable rate but his stomach now roiled as the effects of even more adrenalin pumping through his system played havoc with his guts. Any more mental leaks on her part might just do him in, he thought, and she agreed.

"I'm going to take a bath," she told him and headed toward the stairs. She stopped and turned her head to look over her shoulder and said testily, "And no, not in virgin's blood."

Dean could not even hide a random errant thought from her, like the smart ass reference to Elizabeth Bathory, or the lascivious thoughts that were a constant running through his brain since he'd hit puberty.

"You might want to consider a cold shower and a change of clothes yourself. There's a bathroom down that hallway," she pointed to his right and started up the stairs.

"Aren't you afraid I'll just leave?" he challenged and with preternatural speed she was on him, teeth stabbing into his neck, her mouth sucking a long draught of blood. It was one of the most erotic feelings he'd ever experienced and he would have enjoyed the hell out of it if she wasn't using him as her own personal sippy cup. His eyes rolled back in their sockets as he swooned in her arms.

She broke their lurid embrace and laid him gently on the couch and whispered, icy lips to his ear, "If you leave...I'll kill your brother."


	4. Chapter 4

Dean Winchester opened his eyes and, like Dorothy, he knew he wasn't in Kansas anymore. Hell, he wasn't even Dean Winchester anymore. He was big, taller than Sammy and twice as wide. He looked down his arm, all bulging muscles covered in chain mail, to a huge sword grasped tightly in a blood-covered fist. Long black hair, wet and dripping with sweat, fell past his shoulders spilling from beneath a shining helmet of polished metal.

Deafening sounds assailed his ears. The clang of steel on steel, the thunderous impact of hooves on hard packed earth mixed with the harsh shrills of those selfsame horses being skewered through with wicked looking pikes. Along with the sounds of battle the foul smell of blood and excrement thickly filled the air as man and beast bled out and evacuated as they died in the fading sunlight.

Wetness trickled down Dean's chin and he wiped it with the back of a calloused hand and noticed it came away slick with his own blood. But he felt no pain...or fear though he should have been scared shitless. Just who exactly was he and where on earth...and in what time?

Dean realized he must have been reliving another of Abby's memories, her memories combined with those of the black haired, brown-eyed man he'd only had glimpses of before. Whoever this man was he was a trained fighter and Dean slashed up with the heavy sword just in time to neatly sever the brightly covered head of a Turk.

From the looks of the other combatants he was evidently a Crusader. This must be the Holy Land and he was in the thick of some medieval battle wielding a sword for God, fighting for the Holy Roman church. He looked down at the red cross emblazoned across his chest and recognized the symbol of the Knights Templar. He was a God Warrior.

Dean stopped to take a look around, to try and get his bearings as the battle raged around him but his momentary lapse of vigilance was unfortunate. It caused him to hesitate when action was of the utmost importance and he grunted in pain as a razor sharp blade entered the small of his back slicing muscle and sinew and bisecting his organs. He looked down and saw that the gore smeared scimitar blade had cut through the once pristine red and white tunic and blood stained the fabric spreading out from the cross like a crimson rose opening to the morning sun.

Oh, God he mouthed and fell to his knees, no longer able to hold up his body covered with the many pounds of chain mail that had protected him but to no avail. The curved tip of the Saracen's blade had snaked through the armor's construction joints and found its mark. He was as good as dead but wasn't overly concerned. He knew the Knight he had become in this hideous nightmare, Gerard of Exeter, had been struck down hundreds of years before.

Still on his knees, Dean knew it should have hurt a lot more than it did but he was thankful for small favors and instead of pain or fear of death, he felt a great sense of relief. His long years of war, his years of dogged devotion to the church were finally at an end and, when he did die, he would look upon the face of God. A definite change from the visions of hell he'd been having lately, he thought, and pitched face first into the sand.

He lay where he had fallen until nightfall and when he regained consciousness he noticed an eerie silence. The moans of his fallen brethren had mercifully long since stopped as those left on the battlefield passed on. Now, barely alive, Dean heard the hushed whispers of the Turkish women, their fallen, already buried. As they began to strip the Christian dead Dean wondered who would bury him and his brothers and he laughed, pain slicing through his gut. Whether they were to be properly buried or left for desert carrion it no longer matter to the others nor would it matter to him shortly.

Dean heard a woman cry out in anguish and his thoughts turned to his wife. Abby's face suddenly appeared before him, bright and ethereal in the darkness and he stretched out a quivering hand to caress her cheek. _"Dude, you married this bitch?"_ he wanted to say but what he did say to her, in a voice so deep that it startled him and with words more gentle and loving than she deserved, was, "Take care to dress more warmly, wife, your skin is ice to the touch." Her visage faded away and darkness took him again.

Dean regained consciousness; this time laid out on a pallet on a hard marble floor in a stifling hot room filled with braziers and hushed voices. His fogged brain cleared for a moment and he grabbed the ministering hand of a nurse from whom he was able to ascertain that he had lain, fevered and pain wracked, poisoned by infection, for eight days. It had been an extraordinary amount of time to survive such severe injuries but now it was only a matter of hours before he would most certainly die. He closed his eyes but not before he again caught a glimpse of a woman who resembled his wife, the woman who waited in England, and now, in vain, for his return.

But she had come. Abby entered the room at sunset as she always did and the attending physicians and clergy moved away from her as they always did. Their feelings of distrust and unease at her presence had started the very first night she had arrived. They all knew she had not been close to the outskirts of Jerusalem as she claimed to explained her sudden appearance but thousands of miles and weeks away in England.

"How is he?" she asked the physician and, hearing his pronunciation of immanent death, ordered everyone from the room.

They obeyed in deference to her husband's rank and out of fear of whispered accusations. Witch, acolyte of the dark arts they named her in hushed tones and crossed themselves as she passed by. Their actions hurt her deeply but her love of her husband ran deeper than her pain and she would do anything, had done everything, to keep him alive.

Dean's eyes fluttered open again and after a few moments became accustomed to the darkness. He saw Abby dressed head to toe in the native Turkish garb and smiled at the obvious hallucination. His wife would only wear the richest and latest fashion from Paris, a serious drain on the finances of a crusader who had taken a vow of poverty, but thanks be to God she had a generous father.

Seeing his fever bright eyes watching her, Abby moved silently to the pallet on which he lay and knelt beside him. She pushed the long, lank hair away from his neck and knowing he thought her only a figment of his imagination, she leaned in.

"A love bite's only an expression, Abs," he whispered as her teeth sank into his flesh.


	5. Chapter 5

"Well, here we are. Club Dead," Bobby said as they pulled up across the street from a shabby brick building in the crappier section of Centennial, a fairly large city 200 miles away from Mayfield Farms. The address Bobby's contact had given them looked to be a hole in the wall but when they went inside they found that looks could most definitely be deceiving. "Sanctuary" was sleek, modern, painted black and red and dark as hell with only purple neon for lighting and though filled almost to capacity it was relatively quiet.

The two of them took seats at a table near the bar and Bobby leaned forward to speak to Sam. "I want you to keep quiet, not a word, just nod sagely and whatever happens, do not smile," he warned him, "Oh, yeah and drink whatever she brings you."

"Listen Bobby..." Sam started.

Bobby cut him short. "You wanna find your brother or not?" he asked harshly, "You just drink it down and do not make a bitch face."

Bobby left Sam at the table wondering 'what the hell' and sidled up to the bar and crooked a finger to call the bartender over.

"What'll it be?" she asked cautiously looking around him to scope out the tall drink of water he'd come in with.

Sam spotted her and started to raise his hand but pulled it back close into his lanky body. 'No waving, flirting or smiling' he repeated over and over to himself.

"Johnnie Walker..."

"Blue," she guessed stepping back away from the bar to reach for the bottle on the highest shelf, "And for your...?" What was he? The old guy's son? His partner?

Bobby could see the question in her eyes. "The blue is fine for me but my friend has a, how can I put this, a very sophisticated pallet," he said and looked her straight in the eye.

They widened fractionally and after a few beats she gave a barely perceptive nod.

"Whatdaya recommend?" Bobby asked as two young 'vamps' in waistcoats and capes came up to the bar. They stood next to him and he thought he was done before he had even got started. But the bartender just smiled at the newcomers and leaned in closer to him until they were mouth to ear.

"I've got some fresh ratatouille without the 'atouille'" she told him.

"That'll be good...if you don't have anything 'stronger'."

"Sorry, no house wine at the moment."

"Now that is disappointing. I guess the other will be okay," he told her and checked to see if the guys next to him were paying any attention to anything other than their black painted fingernails. They weren't.

"Comin' right up," the bartender said then leaned in again, "It's pasteurized and a little on the expensive side."

"I've got the cash," Bobby assured her and patted his jeans pocket where there was indeed a wad of cash, money he had gotten for the silver headgear he had pawned for a song and had stolen back as soon as the place closed.

She smiled and signaled the relief bartender then headed into the back office wher she promptly sat down at the desk, put her feet up and lit up a cigarette. Drawing the smoke deep into her lungs she eyed the 22 cubic foot sub-zero refrigerator against the back wall. It had been a special order and could only be opened with a combination lock.

The guy who had walked in with the ginormatron was older than her usual customers and dressed like a real human being, not a pomped out fop or a black on black emoid. She was protective of her regulars and tolerant of the wannabes who came in once and were sufficiently scared away by the "glamorous" life of the "faux vampires."

Definitely not a vampire and probably not an elder although his eyes were hard and looked to have seen things better left unseen. Maybe he was a White Swan looking to crack a few skulls, to scare a few of the girls and boys back to the home life they desperately wanted to escape by acting and dressing the part of vampires. She had to be careful because maybe, just maybe, he was a cop. As for the younger guy she'd see just how sophisticated his pallet really was.

She took her feet off the desk, stubbed out the cigarette and went to the sub-z where she pulled out a half full bottle and poured a generous amount into a glass then stuck it in the microwave. If Stretch was the real deal she knew there's no way he would want it cold. Heated precisely to 99.5 degrees, she poured the red liquid into a wine glass and headed back to the bar. She grabbed the JWB and placed in front of the older man an handed the wine glass to the frat boy and, instead of returning to the bar, she stood and waited.

Sam, trying to hide the panic he was feeling, looked to Bobby for guidance. Bobby felt for the kid but they needed information and they needed it fast so he lifted his glass in a toast. "To Dean," he said and looked Sam directly in the eye and downed his shot while the bartender continued to stand next to the table.

Sam swirled the ruby liquid around in his glass and hoped to hell he didn't just projectile vomit it right back up. He took a sip. It was warm and a little sweet... and coming back up. Using all his will power and all of his limited acting skills he set the glass on the table and looked up at the girl.

"It wasn't too warm for you, was it?" she asked.

Sam shook his head and under table reached for Bobby's leg. He clamped down on the wiry muscle of the hunter's thigh and dug his fingers in almost to the bone and tried to hold, what he knew now was blood, down.

"Their optimum body temperature is 99.5," she told Sam.

Bobby's face remained passive as Sam's fingers dug in even deeper and when he felt his stomach had settled enough he looked at her and said in his most morose vampiric voice, "This will do nicely."

"Good," she said now satisfied, "Do you want me to run you a tab?"

Bobby grimaced outwardly as Sam's grip now threatened to break bones and he covered quickly with a coughing fit. When he caught his breath again he told her, "No thanks, darlin', what we really came in for was some information. My friend here is looking for someone, a relative."

"Yeah?" she said her suspicion rising again. Many people came to the bar only to disappear never to be seen or heard from again and someone was always looking.

"My sister, short, long red hair, weighs a buck soaking wet," Sam said and picked up the wine glass. He downed the remainder of the blood and added, "She has something of mine."

The bartender smiled. She knew 'his sister' all right, knew she was gone and wouldn't be back in this lifetime. "I might have some information for you," she told them, "If..."

"We know," Bobby said, "If the price is right."

"Then we understand one another." It was the morose vampire again giving her a knowing look that frightened her a little.

"I'm closing tonight, come back then," she told them.

Sam immediately stood up and pushed in his chair and headed out the door while Bobby tossed two fifty dollar bills onto the table and told her, "We'll be back at two."


	6. Chapter 6

"Witch!" _"Not a witch, a vampire," _Dean thought but the word was foreign to the knight he inhabited.

"No! Understand me, I did it for you!" Abby cried out confused by his anger. He wasn't going to die; they would live together forever she believed. But as her husband stared at her she realized that he now knew everything.

He saw the necromancer drain her to the point of death then feed her his own blood from a gaping wound in his heart, consummating a marriage to supersede his own: a marriage between the devil and his whore. "You put yourself in league with the devil!" he said incredulously, "In league with the enemy of all I hold sacred!"

Abby's sanctimonious husband would have pissed Dean off royally if he hadn't been so overwhelmed by the man's feelings of betrayal. Couldn't he see that what she had done was out of love for him? Dean guessed not as he felt his own anger rising. _"Stupid, Abs, stupid." _Surely she knew her husband's first and maybe his only love was God.

He looked into her eyes and saw the stunned look on her face and knew she only then realized the depth of her husband's devotion to God and the pure unadulterated hatred and revulsion he now felt for her when he 'saw' her drain the poisoned blood from his own dying body and force-feed him her own. He saw it all through the blood.

Dean threw off the woven blanket that covered him, tore at the putrid, bloodstained linen strips that were wrapped around his torso and saw his mortally infected wound now completely healed. With eyes cold as ice and his mouth set in a grim line, he pulled a knife from a discarded sheath and before Abby could cry out he plunged it deep into his heart.

It hurt as much as Dean could have imagined and he fell back onto the pallet. The pain was unbearable and blood gushed covering his massive chest. But then the pained lessened and the blood stopped and he pulled the knife out and the wound healed. "Tell me how to fix this!" Dean demanded as he rose up and grabbed her by the neck.

She cried out, "I don't know!" and blood tears filled her eyes.

Realizing that his wife was a neophyte and knew only enough to quench her thirst and to stay out of the sun, Dean flung her against the wall. Mortar and tile turned to dust and spread out in a thin cloud over the room. An unholy thirst and a ravenous hunger burned in him and he headed to the door. Turning once to look back at Abby as she cowered in the corner, a look of pure loathing shown in his eyes and she cried out.

"Husband, please!"

Dean turned and left the room in search of ... he didn't know what. He entered a darkened hallway but he had no need of a torch as he could see as well as if it was midday. He could hear voices, a cacophony of sounds that he could easily distinguish as diners in the great hall where he had eaten many times. He quickened his steps and moved swiftly toward the sound of the voices.

The dining hall was filled to capacity and Dean slaughtered them all, every man, woman and child in the great room, even tearing out the throats of the dogs that cowered under the tables, gorging himself on blood and, despite his feelings of nausea, his hunger still burned. He hungered for blood as well as vengeance and the sight of Abby's horror stricken face in the doorway caused him to smile like the feral animal he now was. She turned and ran and he followed, chasing her down long corridors, around corners until he rounded one and stopped, the hilt of a knife protruding from his chest. He started to laugh at her stupidity but saw no fear in her eyes.

"Dead man's blood," was all she said and he fell to the floor paralyzed and watched through open eyes as two hooded figures clamped a helmet onto his head and darkness and silence encompassed him.

He tried desperately get up but was too weak, his arms and legs useless. The sickening taste of the silver protrusion that filled his mouth caused his stomach to churn as his blood turned poisonous. He couldn't even hear muffled sounds and could see only darkness. Even smell was non-existent in the device that encased his head but all the same he knew his wife was with him.

She had laid her trap well and he had been so full of blind rage that he had fallen in completely. What was she going to do now? Keep him mute, deaf, blind and weak as a kitten, completely at her mercy? If she was, it was too dangerous a game for her to play. He would eventually get free and come after her.

Abby could feel neither his anger nor hear his threats, she could only watch as his chest rose and fell, his breathing feeble, his once strong limbs useless. She considered taking the mask off and reasoning with him but he was far beyond reason. The thing she'd turned him into was as depraved and malevolent now as he had once been moral and benevolent. Sadly she moved away and the necromancer stepped out of darkness; blade in hand and Dean never knew what hit him.


	7. Chapter 7

Dean shot upright in the bed clutching his neck. He was wringing wet with sweat and panting as if he'd just broken the three-minute mile. Spotting Abby standing in the doorway he waited for his heart to stop pounding and for her to say something.

"I'm sorry," she started, "I dream about him every time I sleep."

"So this was just one of your dreams, huh, the total destruction of you husband?" he said and ran his hand through his hair, "I don't even want to be around when you have a nightmare."

His words stung and she gave him a sidelong glance and started to pace the room wringing her hands. "My husband was the most important thing in my life. He _was_ my life and he was dying," she said with a sigh, "I found someone who would help me save him. There was no hope he would survive his wounds but we could still be together for eternity...or so I foolishly thought."

Dean watched her as she paced, visibly upset and trembling. He knew just what she had gone through and if he hadn't known about crossroads demons, he too, would have dealt with a necromancer or even the devil himself to save Sam.

Abby continued to pace. "I tried to make things as they once were. I brought him back but it wasn't Gerard. He was monstrous, killing without remorse."

"Listen, you did the wrong thing for the right reasons," he said and hoped to never have to say those same words about Sammy, "You didn't know he'd go nuts."

"For reasons selfish or noble it doesn't matter." She shook her head and continued to pace, "I turned him into the thing he hated most, a sin against God. I damned my own soul and still I lost him."

Dean was going to tell her that maybe, in the end, God had made everything right but after having lived through the carnage and the insanity of Gerard of Exeter's first and last hours as a vampire he knew that even God wasn't that forgiving.

Abby stopped her pacing and just stared at him and he folded like a bad poker hand. "What? You think my deal might be as bad as yours?" She merely cocked an eyebrow and continued to watch him as he verbalized his own fears. "You think maybe Sammy came back wrong somehow, that I should just lop his head off?"

"I know you made your father a promise you could never keep and that you sometimes think your suspicions aren't unfounded. Your brother is safe for the moment but I think he should be vigilant and be prepared."

"We're always vigilant...except this one time, at vampire camp," he smarted off then asked, "So what should Sammy be prepared for?"

"To lop off your head should you come back." Still connected with him at his deepest level Dean's darkest fears shined like beacons.

Over the past months he'd thought long and hard about the things he'd learned about hell and demons and knew she was right. Given his nature, once he'd embraced the demon he knew he would become, there was nothing in heaven or hell that would keep him from trying to find a devil's gate and come back. And when he did, it was certain that he'd show up on Sam's radar sooner or later.

Dean didn't want to think of what the future might hold for him and stood up and stretched. He'd felt like he'd gone 12 rounds with a heavyweight and wondered how Abby stood it, thrust back into her own personal hell day after day, year after year, century after century. Evidently there was a hell on earth for those who couldn't die and apparently vampires like Abby didn't get away Scott free. "How long were 'we' asleep?" he wondered aloud.

"It's the second night." Abby pressed a button on one wall and heard the automatic shutters kick in. She moved to stand in front of a large window to look out at the vast darkness, something that always calmed and comforted her. Dean came up to stand beside her and she said, "You exchanged you soul for your brother's life? Was it the wrong thing for the right reason?"

"Some douche bags say it was a selfish thing for me to do, to burden Sammy with the guilt, but to me it was a no brainer really and somebody's getting screwed in the deal."

She turned to look at him, her brow furrowed, and wondered what he meant.

"I lost my soul a long time ago," he admitted. The weight of his admission lay heavy on his heart.

Feeling his sorrow, Abby asked, "Are you all right?"

"Just a couple of quarts low," he lied and she wrapped her arms around herself as if she felt a chill.

"Can you even feel cold?" he wanted to know.

"Not really, but I can feel your sorrow and your pain and your complete loss of..." she paused looking for the right word, "Your loss of innocence. It chills me to the bone."

"I haven't been innocent since the day I met Ms. Violet Abernathy," he said remembering the boarding house owner fondly.

"Was that the year you gave up completely on ever having a real father?"

In addition to loosing his virginity, it was also the year Dean had finally come to accept his life as it was. Dad may have been around every once in a while but as far as he and Sammy were concerned he was gone. He would protect Sammy, not because John Winchester had ordered him to but because he knew that his father couldn't...or wouldn't. The yellow eyed demon had taken their Dad from them as surly as it had taken their Mom.

"He wasn't so bad," Dean said without much conviction, "Lots of kids have worse parents or none at all. Sam and I did all right."

"That's like saying you have a good husband because he doesn't beat you," she countered, "Sam always had you but who did you have?"

"Sammy's hero worship was enough," he joked and in reality it had been.

Abby felt that young Sam Winchester had been right to put his faith in his older brother. Dean Winchester was the real deal but after so many years of fighting evil to save innocent lives he was empty on the inside; a hollow hero much as her husband had been; both paying the ultimate price. Gerard in service to the church and to God and Dean serving his family and, in a few months, Satan.

Dean had given his all for the vulnerable, the endangered and for the love of a brother and he no longer felt a sense of self worth, only the need for self-preservation which immediately fell by the wayside as soon as someone was threatened and he could help.

"Is this how you thought things would go?" she wanted to know.

"I never believed I'd die of old age, if that's what you mean, or even in some hot babe's bed wearing only a smile," he told her, "but I did, I do, want my death to count for something. I want to go out with a bang but when the time comes for me to face the devil, or whoever holds my marker, I'm afraid I'll go out with a whimper... or screaming like a little girl."

"But Sammy will still be alive," she said feeling the fear underlying his humor and wanting to offer him some small comfort.

Dean smiled, reconciled and satisfied with his choices, "Yeah, he will."

"And you'll be in hell."

"Nice buzz kill, Abby," he snipped but then finished wearily, "I've done nothing but fight since I could pull a trigger and I'm okay with laying it all down, letting others do the dirty work."

"No regrets?"

"About the hell thing? About a million but I'd do it again in a second." He shook his head and smiled then looked at her thoughtfully, "Maybe about never seeing my folks again, not that I believe in all that stuff about being with your loved ones after you die. My mom never did anything to end up where I'm going." Dean had been only four when she had died but he still remembered a few things about his mother and deep down inside he still missed her. He missed his father, too, John Winchester's sacrifice still so painful to think about, always wondering if he was worthy of it?

And Sammy? Putting on a brave face day after day for Sam's benefit, Dean would mourn the inevitable loss of his brother in private until his deal came due. But Sammy wasn't around to see the massive cracks in his tough guy veneer, or so he thought, and as he stood at the window with Abby he suddenly felt like crying and tears slipped down his cheeks and he did nothing to stop them or to wipe them away.

The vampire placed her hands gently on either side of Dean Winchester's face and pulled him close, her tongue snaking out to lick delicately at his blood-tinged tears and a cold fist closed around Sam Winchester's heart.

"We're gonna have to kill 'em, Sam," Bobby said stating the obvious as the two of them watched from the wall surrounding the old Victorian.

"No! We don't know for sure! We'll trap him; put him in the head gear..."

"And what Sam, keep him tied up in the back yard like a vicious dog you don't have the heart to put down?" he asked as they dropped onto the well-manicured lawn. Bobby took a few steps away from the younger Winchester and took off his ball cap. He ran his fingers through his thinning hair and stopped short of ripping out a handful in pure anger and frustration. God, this was the worst-case scenario, he thought, and he knew he would have to take drastic measures if Sam wouldn't or couldn't. He would have to kill a man who was like a son to him and Sam's only living relative.


	8. Chapter 8

Later that night Abby walked into Sanctuary and stopped briefly in the doorway to inhale. No other vampires were inside, only the regular crowd of wannabes who wouldn't wanna be if they only knew. Justine was behind the bar smiling seductively, coming on to one of the regulars but her smile faded when she saw the vampire cross the room and disappear into her office.

Calling on her relief Justine quickly followed in Abby's wake into the small utilitarian room. "Where've you been? It's been, what, three weeks since you even called in."

Abby looked up from the desk where she now sat and noticed the tiny beads of sweat on the bartender's upper lip. "I had to take care of some unpleasant business," Abby told her then listened as her employee's heart rate tripled. Justine knew something and Abby would bide her time, interrogate her subtly playing bad cop, badder cop.

"Feeding ground problems?" the bartender asked defiantly, fishing.

"You could say that but it's all taken care of now."

Justine swallowed and the color drained from her face. She knew she should have never trusted Evan Triplehorn, one of the lesser vampires who dared to frequent Sanctuary. Most vamps steered clear of the place once they got a whiff of Anna Exeter's power and malevolence but Evan was different.

He was brash and cocky. It was said that he was over 500 years old and he told her that she could have the bar when Anna was destroyed and Justine had believed him. She was easily conned because she was greedy, wanting to reap the rewards of anyone's hard work as long as it wasn't her own so she had told Evan about the silver mask that Anna kept locked in the safe. Justine thought that he would just take it and sell it, use the money to by a gun that would take out the bar's owner. It was only later that she found out that Evan had used the contraption to trap Anna so he could drink her blood.

But it was still all good and Evan actually seemed to be getting stronger but also more and more violent until Justine dreaded seeing him come into the bar. He came in almost every night and left with one or more of the customers, taking them out the back door and off into the night. There were plenty of reports of missing kids in the paper and flyers with high school graduation pictures tacked to telephone poles in the neighborhood but no bodies ever turned up near the bar or even within the county, so she figured Evan was doing the dirty out of town and either killing them or turning them to form his own nest.

She didn't really care, Justine just wanted the bar and maybe Anna's huge old house. But mostly she just wanted Anna gone. Evan had promised she wouldn't see Anna again but Justine guessed it was Evan she wouldn't be seeing any time soon and now she wondered how much Anna knew. "Another vamp trying to move in on Sanctuary?" Justine asked unconvincingly. She knew exactly who had instigated the unsuccessful coup.

"Just a neophyte thinking he could take me on...with the help of an ancient artifact. You know, like the one I keep in my safe?" Abby told her casually shuffling through the unopened mail lying on her desk, "I had a little help getting away but here I am."

Justine looked toward the door but remained rooted to the spot.

"Hunters took care of your friend Evan and all of his minions...except for maybe one." Abby thought Justine's heart would burst but she needed to know everything. The door across the room slammed shut and Abby leaped on the terrified woman, her teeth digging in with a vengeance. The vampire saw it all in rapid succession. Justine opening the safe and handing the silver mask to Evan, pocketing the profits from the bar, signing the paperwork to transfer ownership of Sanctuary to herself.

Pulling her lips from the dying woman's neck Abby held her out so Justine could look into death's face but the woman's eyes had gone blank. Instead of her life passing before her eyes, through the blood Justine's life had passed before Abby's and, just before the vampire twisted the bartender's neck around so violently that the skin shredded and the bloodless muscles shown as white as a veal calf's, she saw her handing over the codes to her alarm systems to Bobby Singer.


	9. Chapter 9

Dean, dreaming deeply, lay still. As still as death Sam thought as he stepped up next to the bed on which his brother laid. Abby's bed. "Oh man, Dean," he whispered in a tight voice and clutched the flask to his chest, the handle of Dean's own sharpened sickle stuck in the waistband of his jeans. Of all the ways for his brother to go out, as one of the creatures they hunted.

"Go ahead son; before she gets back," Bobby whispered and nodded toward the sleeping figure barley visible in the darkened room, "It's the only way to be sure."

The ancient one was nowhere to be found. Bobby had searched the place and she was gone as he hoped they would be as soon as they took care of business. He stepped behind Sam and nervously clutched the younger hunter's elbow and scared the bejesus out of Sam who fumbled the flask and splashed Dean's face liberally with the liquid it held, water of the holy kind.

Sitting bolt upright Dean screamed as the flesh on his face began to bubble and steam, melting away in bloody patches and before he could do anything more than shriek in pain Bobby jabbed the hypodermic of dead man's blood into his neck and plunged it home. Dean fell back onto the bed and Bobby turned to face Sam. He kept his voice steady and, with a nonchalance he didn't feel, said, "The holy water tells us about all we need to know, son"

Sam's faced drained of all color. He knew that Bobby was right but he didn't really want to hear him say it out loud. This was his brother they were planning to decapitate, his mother and father both, his hero and he didn't know if he could really go through with it. Besides, maybe Dean didn't really want him to keep the promise he made Sam swear to before each and every job.

"Dude," Dean would say pointing to where a nest of vampires were holed up, or to a mirror into which he was about to utter the word to bring forth a demon or even as they walked into an emergency room filled with accident victims, "if this doesn't work out, promise me you'll do whatcha gotta do."

Or maybe his brother was okay with being a vampire. They didn't have to do anything but leave well enough alone. Dean had been with the girl for three days and had made no attempt to get away. They could just go and maybe, just maybe, Dean and his girlfriend of the living dead wouldn't follow and try to kill them. "Fat chance" Sam decided but he wasn't going to kill his brother...or let Bobby do it. He would put the mask on Dean and wait for the red-head to come back and, if it was even possible, force her to make it right. If not, he would beg her to take Dean far, far away.

He was about to reach for the bag that held the mask when the door slammed open. "You idiots!" It was the girlfriend and like a virago Abby flew at the two of them grasping Bobby Singer by the throat. She lifted off the ground and rose up until she was face to face with Sam Winchester and mentally pushed the young, stupid hunter back up against the wall while still managing to hang onto Bobby, now red faced, his eyes bulging, his air completely cut off.

Panic stricken Bobby's steel boot tips connected with her body again and again and although she grunted each and every time he kicked her no damage was done. Abby held onto him tenaciously until she felt him go limp then dropped him unceremoniously to the floor. She then settled to the floor and looked up at Sam. With bared her fangs, she asked him, "What did you do to him?"

"It was an accident," Sam swore, "We didn't mean to hurt him."

"No, you didn't mean to hurt him. You meant to kill him!"

"He's a vampire." Sam pulled the sickle from his pants and brandished it back and forth much to Abby's amusement.

"He's no more a vampire than you're a...a...wheat farmer," she told him nodding toward the sharpened gardening tool.

Despite Sam's fear a bark of laughter escaped him while a muffled moan came from the bed. Dean's arms jerked convulsively as he tried to reach his face but they fell limply back beside him, the dead man's blood keeping him virtually paralyzed.

"Do you mean to finish what you started?" Abby's eyes darted to Dean then back to Sam and he noticed red splotches marring the porcelain skin on her face in almost the identical spots where Dean's skin still smoked. Blood sweat broke out on her forehead as the vampire tried hard to keep him at bay and Bobby, who had come to, down on the floor.

Sam thought that the two of them could overpower her but she just smiled knowing that she could still get them to kill each other with just a suggestion. Abby hoped she could talk some sense into the pair of them before they caused any more harm. "He is not a vampire."

"What about the holy water?" Sam demanded and wondered how she could possibly explain it away to anyone's satisfaction. The younger Winchester wanted to believe that his brother was still human but the holy water had burned him the same way it did a demon...or a vampire.

Abby wrinkled up her nose as if a foul smell had suddenly permeated the room. It wasn't a physical odor that caused her lip to curl but the psychological stench of ignorance. "You two are so steeped in half truths and superstitious lies that it's a wonder you've survived this long."

"We do alright, Missy." Bobby slowly got up off the floor, one of the silver chains now wrapped around his fist to ward her off.

"He's not a vampire," she repeated for a third time and thoroughly exasperated told them, "He's simply connected to me through an exchange of blood."

"I thought feeding somebody vampire blood turned them into one."

She looked at Bobby and said testily, ""Not my blood...his blood and yes, the 'you ass' was silent."

Sam laughed again. He considered her words and then considered the ways in which she could have shared Dean's blood with him. Wrinkling his nose he said, "Dude!"

"Even now the connection grows weaker," she continued to explain, "His tears will soon run clear and holy water won't affect him but right now his burns are quite painful. So, if you don't want him to suffer any more than he already has then put down your weapons." God, she felt as if she were speaking to children.

In life experience they were just that and she would continue to try and reason with them even though Dean's physical pain was hers. It was excruciating as was the pain of his sense of betrayal and if she were going to help him she need them to go...or she need to kill them.

The small amount of dead man's blood in Dean's veins that kept him semi-conscious on the bed cramped his stomach unmercifully and the holy water burned like molten lava filling his laboring lungs with the nauseatingly sweet smell of cooked flesh. In his stupor he could only think of what Sam and Bobby had done to him. He'd seen them. He'd seen his brother holding the flask and he'd seen Bobby with the hypodermic clutched tightly in his hand. Why Sammy, why?

Abby's stern visage crumbled and suddenly blood tears slid unabated down her cheeks and she turned her head again toward Dean as she heard his pleading question in her mind and felt his despair. This man, so beaten and battered throughout his lifetime, had just hit rock bottom and had taken her down with him.

Sam saw her preternatural grip slip precipitously and wondered what had happened.

Bobby saw it too and urged, "Do it now, Sammy!"

"No, Bobby," Sam said and tossed the sickle onto the bed, "I believe her."

Abby had yet to make a believer out of Bobby Singer and he continued to hold onto his chain and considered going old school street fighter on her until Sam stretched out his arm effectively blocking any move he was considering making. "You can't just let him go," Bobby said, "Vampire or no he'll probably kill us both for what we just did to him."

"Oh, I have no doubt he'll kick my ass but for now I think he's pretty harmless. We need to get him to a hospital." But instead of moving him or calling 911 they just stood back and watched silently as Dean sat up sluggishly, his head reeling from the pain and the effects of the blood poisoning.

He looked up at his brother and saw Sam pull back ever so slightly. He then lifted his hand to his face and it came away smeared with seared flesh and fresh blood and Sam watched in horror as Dean stood up and looked around in search of a mirror, something he'd seen his brother do a thousand times.

Dean Winchester's vanity was his saving grace. Everything that had ever been of value to him had been stripped away over the years and it had left the thirty year old fairly shallow by anyone's standards but he'd always had his boyish good looks to get him by. Now, he no longer had even that.

"It'll be alright, dude. We'll get you to a hospital..." Sam said unconvincingly, his words trailing off.

Finding no mirror Dean turned to face Abby. Her face remained impassive as he stepped closer to her and looked into her eyes. He gasped and was knocked back on his heels as if physically punched. He'd seen his ravaged face through her eyes. "Oh, my fucking God," was all he could say. He turned to gape in disbelief at Sam, then at Bobby, whose face had drained of all color.

Bobby was scared shitless. He was scared of what Dean would do, afraid of what exactly Dean was and he was terrified of the slip of a girl who placed her hand subtly on the injured man's arm. Bobby knew exactly what she was and what she was capable of and he wanted to be as far away from her as humanly possible.

Through the light touch on Dean's arm Abby felt his anger and wondered herself what he might do to those he loved after such a brutal attack. She stepped back as he moved forward, blood still seeping from his wounds, to come face to face with his brother.

"Are you happy now, Sammy?" he asked coldly, "You always were jealous of me. All I had to do was look at a girl and she'd be all over me. You've taken everything else from me so why not my face? It's the only thing I had left goin' for me."

"Dean, it was an accident," Bobby volunteered, "I scared the boy and the flask slipped."

Bobby took a step back when Dean turned on him and said to him, "Yeah and you, you were gonna chop off my friggin' head."

"We thought you were a vampire," Sam tried to explain, "Dude, you cried blood."

"Well, I'm not a vampire," Dean said turning away from the pair of them, "I'm just a hideous looking freak."

"We'll get it fixed. There's gotta be a hospital nearby," Sam said and placed his hand familiarly on his brother's shoulder.

Dean shrugged it off and clenched his teeth as a wave of pain washed over him. The burns hurt all the way to to the bone, through his body to his lungs making it hard for him to breath.

"The sooner we get you tended to the quicker you'll heal," Bobby concurred, "But we gotta move, now." Bobby's eyes darted to the vampire, who seemed unmoved by Dean's predicament as she just stood watching, waiting almost expectantly.

Dean stretched his arm out and his fingers touched her face gently where the red patches marred her beauty. "Help me, Annalise," he whispered and his anger gave way to the fear that now gripped him with icy fingers. He'd used her given name and had asked for the help only she could give him.

She pointed at the two men and ordered them to get out.

"We have to get him some help..." Sam argued but she cut him off.

"Leave now, Sam Winchester, before it's too late." Her voice was icy cold.

Bobby felt a malevolent energy growing in the room and he grabbed Sam by the arm. Sam felt it too and looked longingly toward the door but balked at leaving Dean behind.

Dean turned his back on them and said, "Get out of here, Sammy. You've done enough."

"But Dean..."

Bobby, not daring to turn his back on the vampire or to stay any longer than he had to, laid his hand on Sam's arm. The boy shut his mouth and the two of them moved as one cautiously toward the door, the feeling of foreboding almost a physical weight trying to crush them.

"We'll be back," Sam vowed and stepped across the threshold onto the second floor landing, the vampire following closely behind.

"I'm counting on it," she said flatly, mentally pushing them to the top of the stairs.

Bobby looked down at the bottom and saw himself lying there, head twisted at a grotesque angle, while Sam stared at his body as it hung from the balustrade swinging lazily back and forth.

Convinced that they would now leave; Abby stepped back into the bedroom and gently closed the door.


	10. Chapter 10

Anna Exeter turned and watched as Dean slipped to the floor, his back resting against the bed. She crossed the room to sit down beside him.

He looked at her. "Anna, please help me," he beseeched her.

"All right but I think you know what my help entails."

"I don't care. I don't care anymore. I just can't go through life like this," he said pointing to his face.

"If you don't find a way out of your deal it will be a short life," she reminded him, "and in hell no one cares what you look like."

"But if I do find a way..." he said, his words trailing off. She was offering him a way to save face, literally, and to break the deal, had dangled it in front of him since the first night in the barn. If he was immortal 'they' couldn't have his soul. "But there are strings attached," he reminded her.

"To the deal? A mere technicality," she said gently smoothing back his hair as if soothing a freighted child, "Sam dies if you try to welsh. That leaves natural causes, accidents, murder and life everlasting."

"And they all equal dead, one way or another."

"But one doesn't result in eternal damnation."

"What you're suggesting is kind of eternal damnation. No cheeseburgers, no beer, no pork rinds, no tacos, no..."

"No swallow stuffed peacock, no whale roe, no stag heart..." she cut in mischievously.

"Whoa, girl," Dean's eyes widened and he laugh quietly despite the pain, "You've never had a cheeseburger have you?"

She shook her head and told him, "And you haven't eaten in over three days."

Anna was right; he'd gone without food, without even thinking of food, or even of blood, for longer than he could ever remember. Maybe he wouldn't miss the little things in life like food, beer...and the sun. She took his hand and pressed something into it. He opened it and a thimble with a sharp pointed crown lay in his palm. He looked at her questioningly and she drew her finger in a slicing motion across her neck but he only sat and stared.

"Would it be easier if I were to just bleed into a beer bottle?" she suggested.

Dean snorted and shook his head. His emotions were at war. Fear, loathing, pain and desperation all fighting within him and he simply couldn't put his thoughts into words. He didn't want to be hideously disfigured and he didn't want to suffer interminable torment in hell but it went against all he believed in to become one of those he hunted.

Anna took pity on him and drew him close and whispered seductively, "Trust me."

He started to laugh incredulously, almost manically, until she took the thimble and pressed it gently into her jugular and blood started to run down her neck. His laughter died and he cupped her face with his hands and forced her head to one side and watched the blood as it pulsed form the puncture wound. He was repulsed and at the same time drawn to the texture, the color and most especially the aroma of it.

He dipped his head and inhaled deeply while the vampire remained still regulating the flow of the blood now staining the front of her blouse. She felt his breath, feather light on her skin as he hesitated and then felt the warmth of his lips as he kissed her neck and licked tentatively at the blood. She hissed in a breath as she then felt his blunt teeth tear and rip the tender skin and, urged on by her moan and his own new-found lust for blood, he drew in great mouthfuls from her preternatural fount.

Dean wanted to drink from her forever but the vampire shoved him bodily away. They both stood, Dean glaring at her, breathing harshly, wanting more of what she had offered only moments before then cruelly snatched away. Anna watched him warily as he took a step toward her and she pushed him back again. He came at her a second time and this time she grabbed him by the throat and squeezed until he began to choke and gasp for air.

"Enough!" she commanded and when she felt him stop resisting she let him go.

Dean wanted more but the pain of his burned face, instead of lessening, kicked up ten fold and he screamed and tore at his cheeks wanting to pull the flesh from his skull. This wasn't how it was supposed to be and half mad with fear and pain he was afraid he'd been duped.

"Let the blood heal you," she told him firmly and walked to the far side of the room. Anna was weak from the bloodletting and didn't want to have to keep fighting him off. Soon he would be almost as strong as she and as handsome as ever but the healing took time.

God, what have I done?" Dean cried out.

"What you had to," she answered firmly, "No time for regrets or for making amends to God. Dean."

But Dean did have regrets. He wanted the past few minutes back, wanted to fix his monumental mistake but knew he couldn't and was, in effect, screwed. Eventually the pain lessened only to be replaced by a god-awful itching that also stopped after a time and he rubbed his hand across his face. It was no longer pitted with gaping holes or dripping bodily fluids. His hands came away clean and he began to relax, to enjoy the sensations washing over him.

His senses were heightened many times over those of the first night in the barn and he walked out onto the balcony and looked up into the heavens sure he could see stars being born. Animals of the night screeched, hooted, howled and yipped, setting up a ruckus that was almost deafening and he found himself connecting with night itself. Taking in a deep breath, he smiled, his newly elongated k-nines scraping along his lower lip. He no longer feared what went bump in the night; he was what went bump in the night.

"You weren't afraid I'd turn out like Gerard?" he asked when she came outside to stand beside him.

She shook her head. "You've spent your entire life around all that truly goes against God. It was through faith alone that Gerard believed in Lucifer and his fallen angels. Unlike you, he never knew that evil walks the earth in all its true forms."

"Until you."

She nodded, her smile sad. "Until me."

Dean turned to face her, ran his hands up her arms and squeezed gently. "Well, Annalise of Exeter, what's next?"

"Let's have some fun, Dean Winchester."


	11. Chapter 11

Sam pulled the Impala into the seedy motel parking lot and stopped in front of unit number 9. He rested his forehead against the steering wheel and closed his eyes hoping to ease the pounding headache lurking just behind them. What was he supposed to do now? If Dean hadn't been a vampire before he must surely be one now. Anna Exeter had probably served him up a heaping helping of immortality as soon as they left.

Leaving Dean was only the latest in a fateful string of mistakes he and Bobby had made over the last few days, their knowledge of vampires limited to say the least. Who knew there were degrees of blood sucking and that holy water could give a false positive? Bobby too, even with his vast knowledge, had virtually been flying blind.

Lifting his head Sam wondered where Bobby was. He couldn't leave the old house fast enough and was positive the older hunter was right behind him. So sure that he hadn't even bothered to look in his rear view mirror but the Impala was the only car in the motel's parking lot. Sam rummaged in his pocket for his cell phone and punched in Bobby's number. He answered on the first ring.

"Bobby, where are you?"

"Still on the highway. Where are you?"

Sam looked at the blinking neon sign that, in addition to flashing the motel's name, boasted daily, weekly and hourly rates and recalled Dean's laughter when they had first driven up. "I'm at the Laughing Jackalope Motel, right after mile marker 202."

"Lord, help us," was all Bobby could say.

Sam agreed whole heartily and then on a whim hit the speed dial for his brother. Rock You Like A Hurricane sounded from the back seat of the car where Dean's brown leather jacket lay. Sam reached back and hauled it into the front seat and ran his hand over the thick, battered leather of the vintage jacket.

Across town Dean ran his hand over the baby's ass smooth leather of the Dolce and Gabbana jacket on the mannequin. It was black with a convertible collar; covered zip front and side zip pockets and had a price tag of $3800.00.

Anna grabbed one off of the rack in his size and handed it to the store manager. She had called the poor man at home and thought nothing strange about her request for him to return and re-open the store especially for her. With a little nudge he had come back and she now had the run of the place and Dean, with her blessing, had the run of Anna's credit cards. She next picked out a black stretch poplin dress shirt for $250.00, black tux stripe slacks for $1260.00, army boxers and tee for $60.00 and $98.00 respectively and a pair of brown on black Chelsea boots for $850.00 for him.

Dean drew the line at a Dolce and Gabbana logo belt and instead chose a Ferragamo reversible belt for a cool $320.00. The whole effect was topped off with a pair of D and G Aviator sunglasses for $380.00. The only thing she didn't buy him was anything with a scent of any kind. She liked the smell of his blood.

Their next stop was the Fairfax Hotel and the 5,000-square-foot penthouse suite in which they were now ensconced was luxurious beyond Dean's imagination. It took up the entire top floor and had three bedrooms with adjoining baths, a dining room, an eat-in kitchen and a two-story domed library with a ceiling painted with the constellations.

The kitchen and dining room were unnecessary as they neither ate nor cooked but much to Dean's delight there was a billiards room covered in floor-to-ceiling Persian tiles and four fireplaces inlaid with lapis lazuli. The bathroom fixtures were made of 24 karat gold and a secret passageway was concealed behind the bookshelves on the library's second floor through which they could leave without being seen. It was heaven on earth.

Back across town Bobby parked the Chevelle next to the Impala and said, "This has got to be hell on earth." The older hunter had stayed in his share of crappy motels but just by the name he had a feeling that this one would take the cake. He grabbed a paper bag of take out food and two cups of coffee in a formed paper tray and got out of the car. He kicked the car door shut then made his way to the rented room.

Sam, having only taken time enough to skin off his jacket and hang it on a hook near the door, was sitting at the small utilitarian table nose deep in his laptop. He looked up at Bobby with a half smile on his face. Without Dean around whining about food he more often than not forgot to eat.

"You find anything yet?" Bobby asked and set the food on the table. He handed one of the coffees to Sam.

"I don't even know what I'm looking for. Is there even a "cure' for vampirism?"

"I tell you what. If there is it's in one of those books I took from her house."

Sam looked confused. Had Bobby perused the vampire's library after her not so subtle "Get out or die" visions?

"Yeah, I went back," Bobby retorted noting Sam's bitch face.

"Did you...hear anything?" Sam wanted to know.

"Not a sound," Bobby lied. He'd heard plenty. He had heard the screams of pain and the angry shouts just before an eerie silence fell over the house but Sam didn't need to know.

At the Fairfax Dean breathed "Yes!" as he lay back on the king sized bed. The mattress and linens were so soft it felt like he had slipped into a silk lined womb. He savored the feeling as Anna came running into the room and jumped onto the bed. She lay down beside him the silken womb now embracing amorous twins.

He dove for her, his lips caressing her neck, the pulsing of her blood beneath his lips irresistible and when she didn't resist he bit down softly taking care to not hurt her as he had the first time and she moaned. He felt the old familiar fire in the pit of his stomach but his body failed to respond in the old familiar way. He pulled away from her and sat up licking her blood from his lips, confusion and panic in his eyes. "Man, that's _never_ happened to me before," he swore on a stack of bibles.

Anna laughed at the absolutely crestfallen look on his face and pushed him back down into the lush bedding. "Vampires can't make love per se. We quicken one another through the giving and taking of blood. Like this." She rolled up to sit on top of him and opened his shirt. Leaning down, her long hair hiding her features, her tongue gently travel a path around the pectoral muscle directly over his heart where the aortic artery flowed so steadily, so strongly. She wished she could see his face when she bit down and drew in her first mouthful of rich, red blood.

Dean groaned loudly and swallowed. His eyes closed halfway and he realized that this had never happened to him before. He was having fantastic sex without, well, having sex.

The sun was breaking over the neon jackalope and Sam looked up, his eyes blood-shot and half closed with fatigue. He was beat to hell. Latin had been one of his worst classes. He would ever need Latin, it's a dead language, he would tell Jessica again and again but here he and Bobby sat translating passage after passage searching for what may not even exist, a way to help Dean. He sighed and looked at the coffee pot on the hot plate but couldn't bring himself to drink another drop. "I've had it, Bobby. I'm gonna get some sleep then start in again in a couple of hours."

"Good idea," Bobby concurred carefully placing a folded piece of yellow legal size paper to mark his place in the ancient book he was reading from, "I haven't pulled an all- nighter that didn't involve killing something evil or keg stands in years."

Smiling, Sam laid his thick volume carefully on the table and walked to and fell face first onto the nearest bed and was asleep in minutes.

Bobby pulled the spread from the other bed and covered Sam's lanky body and wondered if this was how it was going to be, Sam and him taking up where Sam and Dean had left off. He hoped not.

Naked, satiated and encircled in clouds of dark silk and satin, Dean slept like the dead. Anna ran her hand down her thigh to where he had fed so greedily and watched the man who had once been so filled with righteous anger, who had condemned all things evil and who was now so deliciously wicked. Well satisfied, she smiled and crawled into the bed to lay by his side as the eternal slumber of the undead stole over her.


	12. Chapter 12

That night Anna and Dean walked together to the side entrance of The Amamax Theater where the security man glanced in their direction then went back to checking his list of pass recipients. He seemed determined to ignore them but Anna just waited patiently and smiled when his head snapped back up.

"I know you," he proclaimed and smiled broadly, "Aren't you Dave Navarro's girl friend?"

"About 10 years BC," she told him.

"Oh man, that concert in Toronto, the alcohol, the girls, the cops!"

She remembered the concert and him and asked, "Whatever happened to that French Canadian girl?"

The guard threw back his head and laughed then handed her two all access passes and told her, "I'll never tell. Enjoy the show."

Slipping the lanyard over his neck Dean shook his head as he walked with her. Dave Navarro was a vampire? That sure as hell explained a lot about the Jane's Addition's lead guitarist. "10 years before Christ?" he asked her as they headed for the stage entrance.

"You are so cute," she told him, "Before Carmen."

Carmen Electra, of course. He could almost hear the Homer Simpson 'Doah'.

The two of them walked up the three short steps to the stage and stood to the side as the band continued to play. Dean looked out at the audience and though the venue was small it was packed with screaming, drug and alcohol fueled moshing fans. The quartet of handsome young men finished up a number called "Dance with the Devil" and Dean thought, 'Been there, done that.' He watched as the lead singer caught a glimpse of Anna and walk over to grab her hand. He then proceeded to pull her onto the stage and wrapped his arms around her and kissed her passionately to the screams and shouts of the fans.

Jealousy reared its ugly head and Dean felt a sense of betrayal when he saw the tiny drops of blood that stained the lead singer's white open necked shirt and he turned to check out the bouncing breasts of the girls in the front row.

Reluctantly Anna ended the kiss and touched the singer's lips with her fingertips as the small wounds healed. He pulled her close and spoke into the microphone. "I'd like to introduce you to my friend Anna, my love, my muse and the inspiration for the following song." He licking his swollen lips as the familiar drum and driving guitar intro to one of Breaking Benjamin's biggest hits started and he began to sing:

Hold it together, birds of a feather,  
Nothing but lies and crooked wings.  
I have the answer, spreading the cancer,  
You are the faith inside me.

No, don't  
Leave me to die here,  
Help me survive here.  
Alone, don't remember, remember.

Put me to sleep evil angel.  
Open your wings evil angel.

I'm a believer,  
Nothing could be worse,  
All these imaginary friends.  
Hiding betrayal,  
Driving the nail,  
Hoping to find a savior.

No, don't  
Leave me to die here,  
Help me survive here.  
Alone, don't  
Surrender, surrender.

Oh, fly over me evil angel.  
Why can't I breathe evil angel?

Oh, fly over me evil angel.  
Why can't I breathe evil angel?

No longer interested in his performance the lead singer held on tightly to Anna. He was ready to leave the stage to be with her again but a small mental push from her sent him back to his microphone to finish the concert while Dean and Anna left to wonder the underground corridors of the venue.

Dean pushed her up against a wall and kissed her neck. "Is he?"

Anna kissed his lips and he could taste the singer's blood. "No, he's just a 'lover'."

"So you're his muse and he's your meal."

"Exactly," she said with a laugh. She pushed him away from her and they started walking again, his arm draped casually over her shoulder. They were quiet for a while then suddenly she stopped and looked at him seriously. "Dean, I brought you here to not only show you that music lived on after the eighties but to give you a taste of your own powers," she told him as a gaggle of groupies passed them by, a couple of the scantily clad beauties tripping over themselves just to get a good look at him.

"I've always done pretty good with the ladies," he said with a crooked smile but now he had eyes for only Anna.

"Yes, but now with a suggestion here, a compelling thought there, you can get anyone to do anything."

"Anyone? Anything?" he asked eyeing the fast filling corridor. To his surprise a girl who was headed in the opposite direction suddenly stopped and came up to him. She was a plain Jane dressed in black leather pants and a red halter top and she simply stared at him as if she recognized him.

Anna watched bemusedly as he took the girls face gently in his hands and kissed her hard enough to puncture his own lip with a fang and long enough to force-feed her a small amount of his blood. Dean broke the embrace and steadied the girl when she looked as if she would swoon. He sent her on her way and returned to walk again with the vampire never giving the girl a backward glance and Anna's laughter rang in the air.

A few hundred yards across the highway from the motel sat the Jackalope Bar. It was dark, dank and dingy and stayed open 'til the wee hours. Sam walked through the door and into into virtual silence. All of two heads turned to give him the once over then turned back to converse quietly over beers. The hunter took a seat at the bar, ordered whiskey and would have given anything to have Dean sitting next to him making fun of the way he grimaced like a girl when the biting liquid burned his throat on the way down. He missed his brother.

Bobby's company was most assuredly welcome but not the same. The two of them had returned to the thick, heavy volumes of The Necronomicon searching laboriously through the brittle pages and had come up with a rather large list of incantations, spells, chants, prayers, rituals, herbs, charms, recipes and symbols, but nothing they felt would reverse vampirism. Sam sat morosely his head in hands and had the sinking feeling that they never would.

Sam signaled for a second drink, slid a ten dollar bill across the bar and heard the door of the bar open. He glanced up and saw a young woman dressed in black leather pants and a red halter-top enter the bar and walk over to stand directly in front of him.

"Oh my God, it is you," she said, her eyes wide, almost manic, "You're Sam, aren't you? Sam Winchester."

Sam got off of his bar stood and smiled tentatively. He was at a loss as to who she was and it showed on his face.

"I knew it was you," she continued excitedly, "I could smell you."

Mortified at the thought of stinking to high heaven, Sam took two steps back ready to apologize for his lack of proper hygiene.

The girl saw the look on his face and explained breathlessly. "You don't stink, in fact you smell kind of nice," she told him, "Dean said, at least I think he said, anyway, he said I'd know it was you when I found you and I did...by the smell."

Sam stepped back to stand in front of her and grabbed her arms tightly. "You know my brother? You talked to him? When? Where is he?"

His rapid-fire questions frightened her as did everything she'd done that night since leaving the concert. "I never met him before tonight...at the Benjamin concert over in Anthem. It was, ya know, like fate. I took one look at him and came right over to him and he kissed me." She raised her hand to her lips, a look of glorious bewilderment on her face. "I've never done anything like that before in my life," she admitted as much to herself as to Sam.

He led the girl over to a booth and she was so hyper that he actually had to push her down into the seat. He slid in next to her to make sure she couldn't escape before he could pump her for more information. "Dean has that effect on beautiful women," he told her although she was, as Bobby would say, as plain as a mud fence.

"Do you think I'll ever see him again?" she asked, hope shining in her fevered eyes, then realized, "He never did tell me he'd call."

"Listen," Sam said as he tried to get a word in edgewise, "I'll give you his cell number. Now please, tell me what he said."

She looked up dreamily, or was it dazed, and said, "He never told me anything. He just kissed me and after that I just had to find you." The door opened and the girl tried to jump up. "It's Bobby!" she shouted.

Bobby lifted a hand in a half wave wondering why Sam would be hitting on a girl when they had so much work to do. He walked over and slid into the booth opposite the couple. "You told her about me?" he asked suspiciously nodding to the girl.

"No, evidently she knows it's you by your smell."

The older hunter lifted an arm and sniffed.

"You smell great...like old leather," she gushed.

Relieved, Bobby lowered his arm and looked at Sam and rolled his eyes wondering if the strange girl was deranged.

"Dean sent her," Sam sighed and explained as best he could, exasperated that he couldn't get a straight answer out of her, "He didn't actually talk to her...he just kissed her."

Bobby stared hard at the young woman and wondered if any of Dean's brains had been sucked into the vacuum in her head when he had. "Do you know where he is?" Bobby asked gently using his best 'you're not crazy, everyone else is' voice.

"He was at a Breaking Benjamin concert...," she started, momentarily hit a brick wall, then started again, "They're going to a hotel and then back to the house tomorrow night."

"Who?"

She looked at Bobby and her face scrunched up as she tried to remember.

"Dean and the red head I guess...even though the skank was macking on the lead singer."

Ignoring the girl for the moment, Sam asked Bobby, "Why do you suppose he wants us to know where they'll be and when?"

The girl filled in the blanks. "You can trap her there," she said and looked surprised by her own words.


	13. Chapter 13

Dean hated to leave the hotel but Anna promised they would stay in bigger and better places, grand hotels in any city, on any continent, anywhere he wanted to go. "I've always wanted to travel to someplace that wasn't an absolute hell-mouth," he told her as he caressed her neck.

She smiled at him, her lover, her child. She loved him but he wouldn't always be with her. As always happened, 'daughters' broke away from 'fathers' and 'sons' from 'mothers', the love and devotion turning to jealousy and hatred. It was the way of the vampire. "We need to go someplace where the blood tastes like wine, where you can drink to your heart's content," she said and thought 'and ask for your heart's desire'.

"What I'd really like is to hang out with Metallica."

"Should I call James?" she asked and reached for her purse.

"You have his home phone?"

"No, only his cell."

"I can hang out with the Stones?" he then asked.

"Whenever you like. I'll introduce you."

He grabbed her phone and scrolled through name after name of celebrities, movie stars and rock stars alike. She dangled her network in front of him like the proverbial carrot but he wasn't taking the bait. He had work to do before he again slept 'le sommeil du mort' and he wondered where the fluent French had come from.

The limo pulled into the circular drive and came to a stop in front of Anna's house. Dean tapped on the glass screen and told the driver he'd see to Anna and that he was dismissed as soon as he retrieved the luggage. Dean backed out of the car and leaned in offering her his hand and as the two of them stood in the driveway Dean embraced Anna and turned her back to the street. As he watched the car leave he e also watched as Bobby Singer pulled the Desert Eagle's scope tight to his eye and sighted in on his target, the vampire Annalise Exeter.

Anna heard the muffled gunshot the instant the hunter fired and pulled away from Dean to turn in Bobby's direction. Her eyes glowed silver in the darkness for a moment and then she collapsed back into Dean's waiting arms.

Bobby ran from his cover across the street from the stately old Victorian and followed Dean inside and up the stairs to Anna's bedroom. Dean laid her gently on the bed and Bobby laid the gun gently on the dressing table. "There was enough astragalus agnicidus in that charge to drop a charging rhino but I don't know how long it will keep her out," he told Dean and pulled the spent hypodermic from her chest.

"Lamb killer, never heard of it." Dean translated Bobby's Latin effortlessly and the older man took note.

"I hadn't either 'til I read her Necronomicon and figure out they were talking about 'loco weed'."

"I thought those books were written in some long forgotten ancient language?"

"They are but it was like reading a dirty book; all the good parts were underlined and translated into Latin."

"Where'd you get the locoweed?" Dean asked as he retrieved the silver headpiece and mask that still lay on the rug beside the bed.

"Did a little swap with an old friend."

Dean looked at him with a jaundiced eye. "She wanted the Necronomicon in exchange?"

"Yeah, but what she got was the Black Pullet Grimoire."

"The bitch'll be back."

"But she'll never find them. Those books are a treasure trove of information."

"Well, Anna sure won't be needing them anymore." Dean picked up the silver headpiece and with his new-found preternatural strength snapped off the two ear spikes before he placed the headgear on the vampire for what was to be the last time.

"Why'd ya do that?"

"I want her to hear the sing of the blade," Dean said in a voice Bobby didn't even recognize. Tere were a lot of things about Dean he didn't recognize anymore. His speech patterns, the way he held himself and his knowledge of Latin and Bobby looked at him, really looked at him for the first time since leaving him with the vampire.

He looked healthy enough, hell he looked too healthy if there was such a thing. Immortality suited the boy, suited him much better than the fires of hell and though things hadn't turned out good exactly, Bobby could live with the outcome and he suspected Sam could, too. But could Dean himself?

Dean caught him staring and he lifted his hand to grab Bobby's shoulder in reassurance. The older hunter instinctively shied away and Dean realized the one true downside of his transformation, Bobby was afraid of him. Sam, too, probaby and with good reason. He dropped his hand and lowered his eyes.

"Listen Dean, it's gonna take us some time for us getting used to..." Bobby started but Dean interrupted him.

"As soon as I take care of Anna, I'm leaving. You're going to have to watch out for Sam now." Dean steeled himself against the pain of their new reality, blood-tinged tears threatening to fall from his eyes. He knew Bobby wanted to tell him he didn't need to go but it was just what he needed to do. If he stayed there was no telling when he might loose control of his inner vampire to either force his brother's hand or to kill him. As it was, it was getting harder and harder to control his blood lust or to contain it to Anna alone.

"You can bet on it," Bobby told him as if reading his mind. Bobby hadn't read his mind but had somehow been able to feel the rage Dean was projecting. It threatened to boil over and when it did, heaven help them all, especially Anna.

Dean turned his attention back to Anna. She lay still upon the bed, hands crossed over her breast as if lying in repose. Had he done that?

"What are you gonna do with her?" Bobby asked standing as close to Dean as he dared.

"What should have been done a thousand years ago," he answered simply.

Again, the content, the tone and inflection were nothing like the Dean Winchester he knew. Why be so cryptic and wordy when "Whack her" would have done the trick. Bobby supposed the new and improved Dean was a byproduct of Anna and he stared down at the figure on the bed thankful to her for at least one other thing. "I noticed there ain't any scars on your face. What'd she do?"

Bobby was fishing but Dean didn't care. What was done was done. "She offered me a drink."

"Of blood?"

Dean looked at Bobby as if he'd lost his marbles. "No, Jack. Of course blood. That's what they do...that's what we do."

"I'm kind of new at this so can you bare with me?"

Dean sighed and nodded. "What do you want to know."

"Did it hurt?"

"When the crater's on my face filled in, hell yeah."

"No, I mean when your human body died."

"My human body?" Dean was momentarily confused then suddenly he smelled a familiar scent. "Where's Sam?"

"Ah, he's with that psycho girl you sent to find us."

Bobby had just lied to him and not very well. Dean wondered why. His question was answered when Sam appeared seemingly out of nowhere and stuck a hypodermic into his neck and pressed the plunger. "God damn it, Sammy!" That was all Dean got out before he fell to the floor in a heap but before he slipped into unconsciousness he realized one thing. They were going to try to kill him...again.


	14. Chapter 14

Bobby and Sam dragged Dean to the far side of the bedroom where Sam moved aside a large dresser and revealed eye bolts fastened to the solid wall beams of the old house. He kicked away a small area rug revealing two more eye bolts screwed securely into the floor joists and, like a well-oiled pit crew in the Demonic 500, they had Dean pinned to the wall and his legs secured to the floor in under a minute.

His hands were cuffed to the wall eye bolts, his legs to the floor bolts and for good measure; a heavy silver chain was strung across his neck and fastened securely to the bolts. Dean's head lolled forward, the chain practically crushing his throat, but Bobby refused to let Sam help him. Dean was too dangerous. Instead he handed Sam the Desert Eagle loaded with the loco-weed and ordered him to cover Anna in case she thought of doing something other than just lying there helplessly.

The older hunter pulled up a chair, glanced once more at the vampire to make sure she hadn't moved and made himself comfortable. At his feet lay a control box with a five-foot remote extension cable that was connected to a syringe feeding system pump that he placed directly next to Dean's immobilized left leg.

The feeding system pump, a nifty machine able to deliver multiple injections from a safe distance, held ten syringes, each filled with 140cc's of a noxious and highly toxic mixture of bleeding heart, black nightshade, angel's trumpet and other herbs to basically 'kill' the blood. He'd also added jamaican root, stinging nettle leaf, burdock root, yellow dock root, hawthorn berries, chlorella, butcher's broom root and bull kelp to cleanse the blood of impurities and sodium hypochlorite or common household bleach to kill any pesky viruses that may linger.

When mixed together and boiled down in a witch's cauldron or, in Bobby's case, a double boiler the ingredients for his Bloody Anna were purported to cure 'infectus lamia' in a person who hadn't yet gone through a complete vampiratic transformation. Someone who hadn't been bled to the point of death and had his or her blood supply replaced with the blood of a vampire, someone whose mortal body hadn't died. The Necronomicon had laid it out graphically for him. It was a painful and arduous process and their best, and maybe only, chance to save Dean...if the cure didn't kill him.

A morning person no longer, Dean finally came around and literally growled his dissatisfaction with his situation and despite the weakening properties of the silver he pulled against his restraints, his eyes wild and glowing silver. "What's the deal, Bobby?" he asked belligerently, "I told you I was leaving."

"That's all fine and dandy and if Sam or I ever need to find you we'll just follow the trail of corpses."

"I can control this, I can..."

"Bullshit! You're worse every minute and besides have you ever heard of a vampire starving itself to death for humanity's sake?"

Dean's lip curled cruelly revealing his fangs. It _was_ getting worse. The hunger was starting to drive him to distraction, trying to control him. "Then do what you must," Dean said defiantly and looked directly at his brother, "Kill me, Sammy. No wait, you already have...my deal remember."

Dean's words cut Sam, twisted his guts into a tighter knot then they already were. "I'll get you out of it, Dean, I promise," Sam assured him as he had time and time again but the promise was starting to sound hollow, even to him.

"I am out of it!" Dean shouted then remembered that more was got with honey than with uncontrolled rage and he tried smiling. The effect was hideous, his gums receding even further from his fangs. His face and demeanor then changed completely to those of sorrow and repentance and he said softly, "Sammy, I know it wasn't your fault. I did what I thought Dad wanted me to do, what I wanted to do. But we can be even-Steven now, just let me go."

Sam and Bobby exchanged looks. Sam wanted it all to be over while Bobby steeled himself for what was to come. "Bobby found something in Anna's books...a cure," Sam offered.

"No! I can see it in your faces. You don't even know if it'll work," Dean shouted. He then saw Bobby's finger settle on the control button and hissed, "I will kill you, old man."

Dean tried to lunge at him and there was a loud crack as one of the old beams gave a little and Sam wasn't so sure they would hold. He started to suggest they wait and try to find another solution. "Listen, Bobby.."

"You keep an eye on her," Bobby barked and jerked his head toward Anna all the while keeping his eyes locked with Dean's, "And let me worry about your brother." Bobby pushed the remote and the first hypodermic pressed forward, its needle settling into Dean's thigh, the plunger forcing the syringe's contents into him.

Dean started to shake and a bloody sheen stood out on his forehead. His limbs tensed up and he roared as the solution entered his body and fed into his bloodstream burning like molten lava as it made its way through his system. "Jesus," Dean moaned, "What's in it?" He tried in vain to knock away the contraption but he was battened down like a ship in a storm.

"Jesus wouldn't have a clue," Bobby said to him, his mouth set in a grim line as he pressed the remote again.

The second needle extruded and another dose of the mixture shot home. Dean's extremities tried to lock up but the restraints held him fast and his muscles charley horsed instead. He pleaded with them both to stop but Bobby, silently and without rancor or malice, sent doses three and four on their way and Dean came undone.

Dean screamed. It was a terrifying sound pulled up from his guts and filled the room. He had bitten down on his tongue when the pain had ramped up from excruciating to unbearable and bloody spittle dripped from his mouth. Snot ran from his nose and blood tears fell from his blood rimmed silver eyes.

Sam stared in disbelief at his brother's transformation. Dean bellowed again and he gripped the Desert Eagle so tightly that he though he might split the grips. A moan came from Anna and he backed away from the bed and pointed the barrel of the gun at her. "Bobby, she's comin' around."

"Just keep yourself and that gun between the two of them and pick your target carefully. We know what she's capable of if she gets out of that mask but we ain't got a clue about Dean," Bobby said and got up from his chair and squatted down next to Dean. "I've seen you look better, son."

Dean's head lolled forward. He panted like a dog with heat stroke and mumbled something unintelligible.

"What'd ya say? I can't hear you," Bobby asked.

Dean's head came up slowly. His blood filled eyes locked with Bobby's and he repeated himself. "I said 'Where is my wife, fool'?"

You could have knocked Bobby over with a feather. Dean had married the bitch? "I didn't realize there was an all night chapel near by," Bobby deadpanned.

Dean sighed heavily. He had traveled so very far and for so very long to get here but he knew she was close. His journey was nearly at an end but he was now chained to a wall and overcome with a sickness not unlike the Black Death. He wanted to know one thing and one thing only from the old man and Gerard of Exeter ground out between Dean's bloody lips, "Annalise of Exeter. Tell..me..where..she..is."


	15. Chapter 15

Throwing caution to the wind Bobby reached in and grabbed Dean's jaw. He pulled up his lip and saw that the hunter's k-nines were still distended and, when he let go of him Dean, tried to bite him. He returned to his chair and click, click. Doses five and six found their marks and he sat back to wait.

Anna was awake, shrouded in pain and darkness, unable to speak but able to hear. She heard Bobby Singer's calm, steady breathing belied by his racing heartbeat. She heard Sam Winchester breathing heavily, his heart already maxed out and Dean, she not only heard his screams and piteous moans but she felt his pain and suffering. She felt the poisons in his blood and the rage in his soul...Gerard's rage! Somehow Gerard was there and she would be virtually helpless against his wrath.

To Dean the pain was worse than anything he could have ever imagined and still Bobby kept pumping the crap into him, seven, eight, nine, ten, and now, to top things off, Crusader Rabbit was in the house. Dean laughed as he felt the pull of the vampire...or was it a not so subtle push from within?

Gerard liked this new body. It was so unlike the empty female vessel that had brought him to Anna. Ignoring the pain he watched through red hued eyes as the muscles in his arms bunched, pulling, straining at the shackles that kept him from her. Without warning the silver ring on his left wrist snapped and, with his free hand, he grabbed for the chain around his neck.

Bobby jumped up, his chair falling over backwards, and Sam swept the barrel of his gun first to Dean then to Anna then back to Dean again and pulled the trigger. The hypo hit Dean squarely in the chest and delivered the load of paralyzing astragalus agnicidus but with no consequence other than Gerard's maniacal laughter. "You think to poison me more than you already have?" Gerard asked and turned his scarlet gaze in Sam's direction.

"Dude, I didn't have a choice. Silver's supposed to stop you."

"I've gone through hell to get here and I won't be stopped by your rat's bane nor your precious metal. I will be with her again."

Sam and Bobby had evidently grossly underestimated the power of vampire love and the curative effects of Bobby's cocktail on Dean when one link at the end of the chain across his neck separated and pulled free from the eye bolt. The chain fell harmlessly to one side.

Sam crossed over to where Bobby now stood, grabbed his arm and pushed him against the wall. He whispered harshly, "What now?"

"We'll, we sure as hell can't just let him go. He's so packed with poison there's no tellin' what's happening to him or what he'll do next."

"I will flay you alive with a dull dagger!"

"Well, I guess that answers that," Bobby said under his breath.

"Release me you whoreson!" Gerard ordered and pointing at Sam with his free hand added, "I wish to tend to my wife. Her sin is not accidental but her stock and trade."

The two of them stood as if struck deaf and dumb and at that point Gerard took matters into his own hands. He stretched forward and with his free hand he could just reach the cuff around his ankle. Slipping a finger underneath it he pulled sharply and the cuff easily gave way as did the other and he rose up, only a single arm still chained to the wall. "Any fool knows that silver is a soft pliant metal fit only for adornment," Gerard said smugly, "Now where is Anna?"

Bobby and Sam both looked to the figure on the bed. Gerard's eyes followed and a gruesome smile broke out on Dean's face and with his only concern now the death of his beloved wife, Gerard warned them, "You'd best run."

Bobby nudged Sam and whispered, "It's working. His fangs are gone."

Gerard looked down at the remaining shackle on his wrist and began to put pressure on it. He looked back up and smiled running his tongue over his teeth.

"It's not working!" Sam whispered and pushed Bobby behind him and instead of running, as Dean had suggested, Sam stood his ground. "I can't lose you, I won't lose you again," Sam vowed and walked back to within inches of his brother and started to speak. His voice quavered at first then became strong and steady.

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica."

Bobby stepped away from the wall and watched as Dean, upon hearing Sam's words, immediately fell to the floor and started to writhe in pain jerking as if taking a physical beating. Bobby began to chant the English equivalent of Sam's Latin invocation.

"We drive you from us, whoever you may be, unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects..."

"Ergo, draco maledicte et omnis legio diabolica, adjuramus te ... cessa decipere humanas creaturas, eisque æternæ perditionìs venenum propinare..."

"Thus, cursed dragon, and you, diabolical legions, we adjure you... stop deceiving human creatures and pouring out to them the poison of eternal damnation..."

"Vade, satana, inventor et magister omnis fallaciæ, hostis humanæ salutis. Humiliare sub potenti manu Dei; contremisce et effuge, invocato a nobis sancto et terribili nomine quem inferi tremunt..."

"Be gone, Satan, inventor and master of all deceit, enemy of man's salvation...  
Stoop beneath the all-powerful Hand of God; tremble and flee when we invoke the Holy and terrible Name which causes hell to tremble..."

"Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine.  
Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos."

"From the snares of the devil, deliver us, O Lord, that Thy Church may serve Thee in peace and liberty, We beseech Thee to hear us."

The two of them finished the last line of the invocation simultaneously and, despite Dean having screamed his voice hoarse throughout the night, when the black smoke erupted from deep inside of him, Gerard's final scream was deafening and it seemed to go on forever. "ANNA!"

Silence hung in the room broken only by the ragged breaths of the vampire as Anna's breast rose and fell and her fingers clenched and unclenched. Dean moan in pain and Sam dropped to his knees next to his brother and unlocked the remaining cuff that held his wrist. Gingerly removing the now embedded ring of silver, blood flowed freely from the wound. There was no preternatural healing, just plain old shredded skin and most likely it hurt like a bitch.

Taking a minute to catch his breath and to still his shaking hands Sam pulled open one of the drawers in Anna's dresser and grabbed a handful of clothes. He dropped them onto the floor beside him and wrapped Dean's wounded wrist in the first piece he picked up, a pair of Victoria's Secret panties. They were incredibly soft Sam noted and black, Dean's second favorite color of woman's underwear, his favorite being the color 'none'.

Sam sat, Dean's head resting in his lap, and began to wipe away some of the drying blood with various other pieces fromf Anna's underwear drawer while Bobby squatted down next to him, snorted at the makeshift bandage and gripped the younger Winchester's shoulder.

"You done good, Sammy," Bobby told him, "But how'd you know it was a demon and not just that maybe we couldn't cure him?"

Sam stopped what he was doing, heaved a heavy sigh, then admitted to Bobby, "I didn't...but he was either possessed or he was channeling William Shakespeare. Either way I couldn't let him get away with calling me a whoreson."

Bobby laughed, "Bitch is okay then?"

Sam snorted and nodded, "Yeah."

They sat in companionable silence and as Sam waited for the other shoe to fall, he continued to wipe away more blood.

Bobby dropped the shoe a minute later with his next question. "Do you think he's cured?"

"I don't care Bobby," Sam said firmly, his tone broaching no discussion nor difference of opinion, "If he's not, we're gonna let him go."

Bobby's mouth set in a grim line but he nodded his head. "Okay son, if that's what you want."


	16. Chapter 16

They were gone. Anna no longer felt Gerard's presence, not his anger nor his hatred. Moreover, she could no longer feel Dean Winchester and thought that either Bobby Singer's cure had worked and there was no longer a connection between the two of them or he had died. Either way she missed him already. He had a quality that endeared him to her and to anyone else he'd ever met, she imagined. He made her laugh.

She could hear the other two speaking in hushed tones as if they might wake her or as if she couldn't hear them. Then the room became as quiet as a tomb, a misconception really. In the early days Anna had spent many a day in tombs and had found them especially noisy, what with grieving relatives and such. Anna's eyes began to grow heavy and she knew the sun's first rays had broken the horizon. She would sleep and await her fate...if it didn't come before nightfall.

Sam, with Dean slung over his shoulder, made his way down the stairs and into the living room. Evidently this particular vampire liked to entertain as the room held seating for about a hundred. Sam laid his brother out on one of the large couches then sat on the coffee table next to him to watch and wait. But first he wanted to check one thing and leaning forward he grabbed Dean's upper lip and lifted.

"Dude," Dean whispered and shook his head weakly to dislodge Sam's hand, "I don't know where those fingers have been."

Sam wanted to laugh but instead looked warily at his brother's pale face. Flecks of dried blood were stuck to his neck and splashed up into his hairline.

"Come on," Dean said with a little more vigor in his voice and baring his teeth for inspection insisted, "You know that was funny."

Sam finally did laugh when he saw the familiar straight compact row of teeth. "Are you hungry?"

Dean looked pained and curled up his lip in distaste. "I could use a little nosh," he said as he sat up and leaned back into the thick leather cushions, " Mayhaps a trencher of pigeon's blood?"

Sam's eyes widened and he stood up abruptly ready to run.

"Easy, Sammy. Stand down. I'm fine, really, just not hungry. I feel like I have the mother of all hangovers though." Dean ran his hand down his face and around to the back of his neck to massage his painful muscles. "And my wrist hurts like a bitch," he added and held up his injured appendage and seeing the bandage asked, "Is this what I think it is?"

Sam smiled sheepishly and Dean added, "Always prepared, eh, McGuyver?"

Bobby stuck his head into the room and saw that Dean was upright and that Sam was still within his reach. He breathed a sigh of relief and told them he had coffee ready in the kitchen. "I was gonna break out the Limouge," he told them as they filed in and sat at the small servant's table, "but since you're family...you don't count." Bobby set three sturdy mugs on the table and sat opposite Dean. "So how're ya feelin', son?"

"Like hammered dog shit," Dean told him and lifted the mug to his mouth in his good hand, "What'd you shoot me up with."

"A little bleeding heart, a pinch of black nightshade. angel's trumpet, jamaican root, stinging nettle root, burdock root, yellow dock root..."

Dean cut him off. "Okay, okay but where'd you get it all? Not from Bela, I hope."

"Well, you didn't think all those little baggies at my place and in the trunk of my car were full of weed, did you?"

Both boys looked at one another then back to Bobby.

"You did, you little piss ants," he said with a scowl and a sparkle in his eyes.

"We always had you pegged as a child of the sixties," Sam admitted with a red face.

"I was and havin' a hell of a time...'till Nam." Both Bobby Singer and John Winchester had fought in Viet Nam and neither liked to talk about it so the boys weren't surprised when Bobby changed the subject back to Dean. "You look kind of crappy, I mean, not robust and full blooded, if you know what I mean."

"I'm fine," Dean insisted again, "Whatever you did to me worked."

"I'd hoped as much but it was Sam who figured out you had an uninvited guest."

How had Gerard managed to possess him? Dean thought back and remembered the girl at the concert, the one he'd sent to find Sam. A myriad of expressions crossed his face when he realized he had tongued a demon and had been schlepping him around for the better part of a day and night and hadn't even known it.

Sam leaned forward fascinated by what was playing out on his brother's face and said, "Well?"

"Small netherworld," was all Dean said and shrugged his shoulders, a pensive look on his face.

"I'm guessin' it was her old man, right," Bobby said and took another sip of his coffee.

"It was Gerard of Exeter, Anna's husband, a knight in the crusades."

"Undying love?"

"Love had nothin' to do with it, Sammy. He came back to kill her and we let him through the gate."

"Great," Bobby said with disgust, "They've come through with agendas other than chaos and general mayhem."

Dean looked thoughtful for a moment then continued, "I also learned something else from him. He was there for ten thousand years."

Sam quickly did the math and said, "Even if he was in the earliest crusades, he would only have been dead a little over a thousand years," and Dean nodded.

"You mean, time's relative in hell?" Bobby surmised correctly.

"I guess time flies when your having fun," Dean snorted lamely, "and Gerard showed me some of the good times."

Bobby looked at Dean's face and, although his features were passive, unease showed in his eyes and he was suddenly struck with the unwelcome notion that maybe curing Dean had been more for their benefit than for his and that maybe they should have left well enough alone. What had started as a chance encounter with a vampire could have been Dean's salvation.

"Visions of hell?" Sam said wanting to draw his brother out, to let him share what he'd been shown and to finally talk about his fears, which up until then had been basically of the unknown.

Dean nodded and ran his hands down is face as if trying to wipe away the images. "Everything's there, fiery pits, unimaginable beasts maiming and killing over and over again, chains and meat hooks and millions, maybe billions and billions of souls all tortured or torturing. All the things that God promised us sinners and more." Dean's hands shook visibly and fear replaced the unease in his eyes as he looked at Bobby first and then at Sam. "But the worst thing he showed me," he stopped to take a sip of his now cold coffee, "were the souls that didn't belong there. Gerard Exeter didn't belong there, doesn't belong there even now...and we sent him back."

"Come on, Dean," Sam begged to differ, "He was a demon."

"Not by choice. Never by choice," Dean said heatedly. He stood up quickly and his legs threatened to give way. He grabbed the table's edge to keep from falling and his eyes warned off any help from Sam or Bobby.

"You need to rest." Bobby insisted but Dean shook his head.

"Not before I take care of something," he said and walked out of the kitchen.


	17. Chapter 17

Anna opened her eyes to complete darkness. She wore the mask and her head was still attached to her body so all was well, comparatively. She was, however, no longer on her bed; it's soft comforter exchanged for hard, lumpy earth by the feel and the smell of it. She also smelled Dean Winchester. He smelled fresh and clean and of Clive Christian No. 1 and she smiled around the silver ball gag. He was still very much alive and she was pleased but at the same time pissed beyond words. If she could only speak or send a thought through the silver that shielded him from her she could be free and they could be together again.

Dean looked down into the pit in which he had placed the vampire and felt a sudden urge to climb down to her and… "Whoa," he said aloud and walked away from the hole, "Goddamn, Anna." She must be getting stronger if that were possible and he grabbed a six-pack of cold beer from the front seat of the cement mixer that was parked and idling a few yards away. Twisting off the top of one of the bottles he chugged it down before returning to the hole.

He had borrowed the truck and sixteen yards of concrete from the outfit that had been contracted to pour the Resurrection Dam, a 20 million dollar project on the Salt River, a hundred miles or so from where Anna lived. He had left the Impala as 'collateral' and hoped it would still be there when he returned the mixer and not impounded in some police lot. He finished his second beer, tossed the bottle to the far end of the pit and sat down on the rim.

He retrieved another bottle and steeling himself, he began to speak to her. "I know you can hear me, Anna," he said and took a pull on the Heineken then continued, "I know right about now you'd probably like to string my spleen on a chunk of my intestines and wear it for a necklace...and I can't say that I blame you. But you know I don't have a choice. I can't just let you go."

William was right, Anna thought. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!

Dean finished his beer and rolled the bottle into the pit where it shattered on the steel rebar. Silently he pulled another bottle from the cardboard container, twisted off the top, downed half of the contents and quietly belched. "Sam and Bobby think I'm cutting off your head as we.. well, as I speak, but you know I can't. Yeah, I read the books. The greatest sin is killing the one who made you but from the first moment I drank from you, I knew that you couldn't, that you wouldn't turn me unless I asked you. A vampire with scruples. Who knew?"

More than you know, little one, Anna thought, visions of dead Sam and deader Bobby dancing in her head, along with visions of what could have been, what should have been.

"After I was burned, I did ask you...but only for help fixing my face...so I had you on a technicality. Your blood did heal me and, for a short time, you were my maker. I can't kill you but I can't just let you go because, like you said yourself, you're inherently evil and killing evil's what I do, who I am."

He sailed the fourth empty beer bottle into the pit and opened another. "You almost had me at Hetfield's cell number, Anna. Sex, your blood and rock 'n' roll's not a bad way to spend eternity, not to mention the limos and that sweet American Express Centurion card...but I keep goin' back to that woman in the bar. I know you're thinking "collateral damage" but she was a living, breathing human being and, no matter how fucked up, she didn't deserved to die like that."

Of course he'd seen it all, lived it with her as it happened but Justine had betrayed her more than once. Surly he could understand that.

"Benjamin was dead on when he wrote 'nothing but lies and crooked wings, spreading the cancer, hiding betrayal, driving the nail' but I can never be that guy." Before he knew it another soldier was dead and the bottle joined the others in the hole. He broke out the last beer in the hopes of shoring up his resolve. "In case you were wondering," he said changing the subject, "Gerard is back...but not where he belongs. There's no way in hell that man would have ended up there if not for you."

His words hurt her deeply. Gerard was her only regret in her long life and it spoke volumes about the inherent evil that had come to consume her over the years.

"We tried to do what we thought best Anna, you and me," he said then smiled thoughtfully, "but do you ever think that maybe, instead of being self-sacrificing and noble, we're just plain self righteous and self-serving?" He waited as if she could answer. "Nah, me neither."

Dean sat listening to the sounds of the warm summer night and finished his beer. After throwing the empty down with the others he stood up and brushed off the seat of his jeans. His stomach clenched as he looked down at her one last time and he turned and headed to the mixer.

Anna heard it's rumble as Dean backed it up to the pit, felt the vibration and could only guess at what it was and what was to happen.

Hopping out of the cab Dean pulled down the metal chute and attached the extension pieces, lining it all up with the rebar lined pit. He put his hand on the lever ready to pull it and shouted, "I'm going now, Anna, and if things go as I expect they will, we might just end up together some day after all. You, me and Gerard, all of us in hell whether we belong there or not." Dean hit the throttle on the rear of the truck and thick, wet concrete quickly covered the vampire and filled in the hole.


	18. Chapter 18

Standing outside the old Victorian in the warmth of the sun Dean felt as if the last few days of his life had all been a dream, granted a kind of horrifyingly weird and wondrous, wet dream. He glanced across the street at his brother as he leaned against the Impala and at Bobby as he leaned against the Chevelle. He smiled, more than ready to leave.

Sam pushed off from the car and made his way over to him and searched his brother's eyes for any signs of residual vampirism and Dean said for the hundredth time as he put on his sunglasses, "I'm okay, Sammy."

He had half smile on his face until Sam asked, "So, did you sleep with Annabel Lector?"

They fell into familiar cadence walking toward the cars and with a mock shudder Dean said, "With a vampire? Definite bodily fluids involved. Besides, what kind of perv do you think I am?"

"Hello. Succubus," Sam reminded him and let his brother's non-answer slide, "Pretty high on the perv-o-meter."

"Hello. Werewolf," Dean countered.

"Touché," Sam laughed sheepishly then looked at Dean's new clothes. "You're keeping the stuff she bought you?"

"She sucked my blood out Sammy, not my brains. I didn't want to leave anything behind that would tie us to the place and besides I look hot."

They stopped between the front of the Impala and the rear of the Chevelle where Bobby waited. "So, what'd you do with her?"he asked.

Dean answered without remorse and with a smile on his face. "You could say she's damned for all eternity."

Sam gave him a blank look while Bobby looked at him with a jaundiced eye. "I don't wanna be surprised by a blood-sucking librarian tellin' me all these books are overdue," Bobby said and closed the lid to his trunk..

"Well, she's kinda like that Red Sox jersey that was buried in Yankee Stadium...only no one's ever gonna dig her up and sell her on Ebay."

Bobby was mildly disappointed. To him the only good vampire was a decapitated one but he would take Dean at his word that they wouldn't be seeing her in the next millennia or two. The three of them stood in silence, almost awkwardly, and Bobby finally asked, "Where are you two off to now?" His own intentions were to sit back with a good book...after hiding them where Bela could never get her hands on them.

"There's a train conductor in Chicago who keeps punching people's tickets, literally," Sam ventured.

"That could be anyone. Chicago's a rough town," Bobby said.

Sam added, "The train went out of business in 1918...two years after the conductor died."

"Okay then." Dean extended his hand to Bobby and the hunter grabbed it and pulled him into a bear hug.

"I will find a way out for you, I promise," Bobby vowed.

"I know you will," Dean said but his words were without conviction.

Bobby saluted Sam and headed to the driver's door of the Chevelle. He started her up and waved amid the smoky fumes and headed back to South Dakota...or so they assumed.

Sam walked around to the passenger side door and Dean slipped into the driver's seat of the Impala. He ran his hands lovingly around the steering wheel, took a deep breath and smelled beer and...

"Cheeseburger?" Sam offered and pulled the Carl's Jr. paper sack from the back seat and held it out as a peace offering, "We good?"

Dean kept his hands on the wheel and sighed in exasperation, "Dude, you burn the crap out of my manly visage, then try and cut off my head and to make nice you offer me a lousy cheeseburger?"

He was right, Sam thought. How could he make this up to him? He took a deep breath and turned to his brother and pushed the bag toward him. He had to make things between them better. "It's got mushrooms."

Dean snorted and pushed the bag away.

"And jalapenos," Sam added.

Dean snatched the bag back but held it at arms length. "Sauce?"

"Barbeque."

"Fries?"

"Chili cheese."

"Drink?"

"Heineken," Sam said hitching his thumb over his shoulder to the back seat where the ice cold six-pack sat.

Opening the bag Dean closed his eyes and inhaled the aroma. He then reached in and grabbed the monstrous burger, unwrapped it and took a huge bite.

Smiling, Sam turned his attention to his laptop while Dean gorged himself, sighing occasionally.

"I really missed you," Dean mumbled around the food packed in his mouth.

Sam turned expectantly only to see that his brother had been speaking to the cheeseburger. He should have known and fought the urge to wipe the barbecue sauce Joker-esque smile from Dean's face. Instead he simply continued to sit in silence listening with half an ear to his brother make happy eating noises as he wolfed down the burger and the fries followed quickly by two of the six beers.

A loud belch signaled the end of the feeding frenzy. "So," Sam asked with forced nonchalance as he held out a handful of napkins, "we still friends?"

Dean wiped his face and glanced over at his brother with nary a hint of a smile on his face. He turned to check the rear view and side mirrors and his hand went to the key and turned it. The Chevy's powerful motor roared to life and he felt a surge of unadulterated joy.

"Dean, I..." Sam started only to be drowned out as Dean pushed in the ACDC cassette and twisted the volume knob.

"No, Sammy. We're not friends," Dean shouted then let up on the accelerator and turned down the music, "We're brothers."

Sam smiled warmly until Dean added, "Who else would drink a glass of warm rat's blood for me?" Dean smiled smugly and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat of Highway to Hell."

"You'd do the same for me."

"Not a chance in hell, Sammy," Dean assured him then changed the subject, "You got the GPS on line?"

Sam continued to smile and nodded his head. He knew Dean couldn't stay mad forever but he had the feeling that this was only a conditional pardon and that they'd be pretty much doing whatever Dean wanted whenever Dean wanted to do it. Sam was more than happy to play along until Dean insisted they do something so outrageous that he, tired of wearing his hair shirt, would flat out refuse and things would go back to normal, the guilt card fully played out.

"Well, then let's roll," Dean said and the Impala surged out onto the highway.

Epilogue

The guilt card was thrown onto the table in less than a week and eight months-thirteen days-twenty-three hours-forty-one minutes and four seconds after he'd entombed her in twenty feet of concrete, Anna heard Dean Winchester scream and the earth shift. His deal had come due and she smiled sadly. Moments later she felt the earth shift again as even more water started to seep through the concrete.

Anna of Exeter loved many things, artists, rock music and rock stars, the finest things money could buy and Dean Winchester. But at that moment what Anna loved best was greed. Greed led to kickbacks and shoddy materials and it would only be a matter of time before the dam failed and the Army Corps of Engineers would tear it down and start all over but not before they found her and, not knowing who or what she was, they would let her loose. Anna sighed and among other things wondered just how long it would take her to find Sam Winchester.

FIN


End file.
